For those newbies out there looking at pay rates, Ive been tracking the SWA pay rates over the last 6 months and comparing APC listed pay rates of $/Trip versus $/Hour. SWA runs on a "trip for pay" system versus block hours. The 2nd year pay for
SWA at APC is listed as $88 per block hour (after they do some conversion to get "trips for pay" to look like pay "per block hour").
These pay rates listed at APC seem to be incorrect. See below.
Here are the results for a 6 month period Ive been keeping track of:
Month 1
Trip for Pay (TFP): 112
Block Hours Flown: 88
Avg Trips per block hour: 1.27
Month 2
TFP: 76.16
Block hrs Flown:60.47
Avg Trips paid per block hour: 1.26
Month 3
TFP:106.4
Block hrs Flown:81.52
Avg Trips paid per block hour:1.31
Month 4
TFP:78.23
Block hrs Flown:42.47
Avg Trips paid per block hour: 1.84
Month 5
TFP:106.8
Block hrs Flown:82.46
Avg Trips paid per block hour:1.30
Month 6
TFP:138
Block hrs Flown:95.53
Avg Trips paid per block hour:1.44
The above trips include 3 days of reserve total over the 6 month period, flew 2 of the 3 days.
AGAIN, THIS IS WITH only 3 days of reserve TOTAL for 6 months. Sitting a lot of reserve and NOT flying would skew the numbers, not the case here.
So, taking the 6 months above, the overall average of trips per hour is: 1.37 (one block hour flown paid more like 1.37 block hours)
The pay rate at SWA is your total "TFP" times your pay rate.
The SWA pay rate for TFP per hour for a 2nd year guy is $77.45 per trip.
That means for every BLOCK hour flown, you ACTUALLY on average get paid 1.37 times your pay rate of $77.45.
So in actuality the pay rate for a 2nd year SWA pilot is more like
$106 PER BLOCK HOUR FLOWN ($77.45x1.37=$106 per block hour FLOWN).
As an average, from one person experience, you can increase all pay rates for SWA pilots by roughly 37% from what is posted on APC.
As a sidenote, the average "time away from base" over the last 6 months was 9.31 days per month.
The average number of LEGS PER DAY flown was 2.4 over the 6 months.
Hopefully that breakdown gives folks some more information when making decisions about airlines and pay rates.
Please note, this is not a post to build up SWA, or a "my airline is better than yours" etc BS, its to provide more INFORMATION about decisions, PAY RATES and their accuracy.
This is just one persons experience. As a note, all the above times dont include VJA time which pays time and a half...which would send the numbers much higher. I need to get some of that
Per Diem etc also not included.
Cheers!