Originally Posted by
flysooner9
anyone have realistic take home pay numbers their first year? Trying to do analysis to see if i can make it work or not.
I made $32,000 my 1st year with Spirit. You get ham-stringed on training pay the 1st two months, the rest is simple math - $38.50 an hour, times 72 hours a month. By the way, that 32K I made is including some overtime sadly. It was a painful year financially. Very painful, and incredibly stressful for my wife.
Before being hired, I heard all these stories about how the company hands out overtime like gravy. Junior Man pay, and release from trips with pay protection. Those days are long gone. Consistent overtime is hard to come by outside of the busy season. Only the senior guys kill it regularly on transition pay. Or those willing and able to live by their phone and rush to the airport at the drop of a hat when scheduling calls.
Know what to expect before coming here, then make the decision that is best for you. For me, Spirit was worth the risk. If they got a good contract in a few years, it could be a place to hang my hat. If not, I needed 121 time and an Airbus type to polish my resume for the legacy carriers. I thought I'd make more 1st year, not a lot, but more than I did. That kinda money is demoralizing and quickly so. I've also watched practically every airline BUT Spirit get a massive raise during the last year and a half. Some by way of contracts, others by pay raises outside of their contract as a way of keeping pilots morale up (JetBlue, American). Spirit has instead chosen to stall contract talks as much as possible, even going so far as to sue the pilots. Let's just say our morale is not as high as most airlines right now.
Kinda hard to imagine staying now, unless we get a good contract with a MASSIVE pay raise before summer ends. After summer we have little leverage other than increased pilot attrition, and the growing failure rate of low time new hires. When I was hired barely a year ago, the average new hire had about 6,000-8,000 hours with a healthy chunk of turbine PIC time. Now the average seems to be 2,500 hour regional 1st Officers with no PIC turbine.
Food for thought. Good luck, whatever your decision.