Originally Posted by Lewbronski

To do over $300K as a FO in your fifth year at SWA means you average at least $25K per month. The current pay per TFP for a fifth year FO is $147.50.

Unless StayFrosty is including the B-Fund and profit sharing as part of that “over $300K” fifth year FO compensation figure, that means you’d have to credit very close to 170 TFP per month, every month, as a fifth year FO to bring in that kind of income.

That’s 17 days of work every month at an average of 10 TFP per day. The typical line here works 12-14 days per month. The typical duty day probably pays about 7.5 to 8 TFP at straight pay. My rule of thumb is that I won’t pick up an extra day of flying for less than 10 TFP per day, which means I won’t fly extra unless it pays premium.

In my base, very senior in my seat position, it’s unfeasible for me to average 10 TFP per day because it’s nearly impossible to get rid of enough straight days of flying to raise my average TFP per day above 10. The only months where I’m nearly guaranteed to be able to do that is when I have at least one week of vacation in that month.

StayFrosty’s math would necessitate flying a normal line’s worth of flying (in terms of number of days of flying) plus at least an extra 3-5 days per month and flying all of those days at premium pay.

Or maybe StayFrosty gets a line each month that averages 12 days. He/she is able to give away a couple of those days. My experience recently, as a very senior pilot, is that I can reliably give away about two days of flying per month. I haven’t had much luck being able to give away more days than that in a month. Often, I’ll have turns paying 9+ that don’t get picked up from give away.

So, let’s say StayFrosty gives away two days of flying each month to bring him/her down to ten days of straight flying per month. That puts him her at about 77.5 TFP. To get up to 170 TFP for the month would require flying an extra nine days, all at premium pay. That’s 19 days of flying for the month, which some people don’t mind doing. But then the problem becomes finding enough premium flying days that don’t take you over the block time limitations for the month. Not impossible but it’s difficult. Maybe that’s how he/she does it. I don’t know.

It could be that StayFrosty is in one of our “cartels” (I’m not) or has some other way to consistently fly all or nearly all of his/her days at premium pay, but to suggest that it is doable to consistently fly 170-ish TFP month-in and month-out as a normal fifth year line pilot without some extra help to clear straight-pay days from his/her board is a major stretch.

I’m not saying it’s not doable, but if you’re going to be able to do it, you’re probably going to need help in the form of a cartel, a military reserve or Guard job (to be able to drop mil leave and help clear your board), work for SWAPA (to help clear your board with trip drops), some kind of company special projects or flight ops job (to be able to drop trips), or some kind of something that allows you to clear your board way beyond what the average pilot is able to do via TTGA or ELITT. And I’m not sure that any of those options I just listed beyond being in a cartel would allow you to consistently credit over 170 TFP per month.