Originally Posted by
Flightcap
I'm so confused. Why is the Fedex guy so invested in this topic?
I'm a second year FO in one of our relatively senior bases (ORD). I credited 100+ hours per month with 17 days off in summer months. It's not impossible to make more than guarantee. Yes, premium pay is fickle and unreliable. But no one here is saying you should plan your budget around premium pay numbers. The point is that those kinds of numbers are possible. Not guaranteed. Possible. And not just wildly outlying numbers like the $700k paycheck for people with exclusive "special gigs." Possible for regular ol' lineholders.
My guess is some people enjoyed thinking Spirit was a place where you’ll never make money, makes them feel better about their life decisions. So when Spirit pilots say they are making good money after 5 years, people want to doubt it.
No way am I ever saying our pay is even close to FedEx, not even close...but I think the conventional wisdom with many “Big 6” guys is “Spirit is a nice airline to work at while trying to come and be junior to me at my airline.” So the fact guys are happy here and make good money here is like an ex girlfriend who no longer wants you and is happily married and you’re like “whaaaaat, you used to be all up on me”.
You ever have a legacy guy ask you “so how are things at Spirit?” And you reply with how it’s a good gig and give him some examples and their response sometimes is “really, wow!” Like they expected it to be worse in every area compared to their Big 6 gig.