Originally Posted by
Name User
Not to be pessimistic but if losing a couple thousand a month (after tax) is going to hurt you, you really need to consider that you will be at the very bottom of a 15,000 long list of a highly leveraged company that has the weakest margins of its peers.
Your main concern should be what do you do if you get furloughed in the first couple years. FWIW I had roughly three years living expenses in cash waiting for me when I left my regional and that didn't include my wife continuing to work. I wanted worst case covered.
If you can make that work, you can find a way to make first and second year work which is a best case scenario.
Save your money now and if you don't need it, you've got it and can invest it when you feel you can start to take more risk. That is what I did at about the 2.5 year mark and it worked extremely well for me.
I get that it's fashionable to be pessimistic as an airline pilot, but for a pilot at a AA WO carrier who's young there really is no choice but flow. Any significant hit that would cause a furlough at Mainline is going to roll downhill and affect the WO carriers significantly, and these are carriers that lack any CBAs with other mainline carriers to insulate their pilot groups.
Additionally, the first half of the 2020s is the major retirement wave at AA, with roughly one third of the seniority list hitting mandatory retirement in that period. The earlier one can get hired in that wave, the better you'll fare, because even if the worst were to happen, the airline could very easily shrink significantly while not furloughing. Yes, seniority wherever one was stuck would suck, but longevity, and therefore pay rates, would obviously increase.