Originally Posted by TheBlueGuy

Smart moves! I went the other way. Was an FO for $20k/year for a bit before seeing greener grass in rotorcraft. Whoops. Heli flying gets pretty tedious too. Lots of negative customer management and oversight at the moment and keeps getting worse.



~10 years ago I made $60-80k for the same work. Top pay I knew of back then was just under $100k. Now lots of base/1st year pay around $105-110k with pretty easy to achieve $130-140k. A big improvement but still plenty of room to grow if we're to keep anybody vibrating around in helicopters! I do think about rejoining your ranks, thanks for keeping threads like this one around and keeping the information out there! I have a side hustle tied to helicopters that is currently worth enough to keep me rooted in place or I would have tried to make the jump. If I keep reading these posts one of these years y'all will convince me!



For sure there are pretty decent fire and utility jobs out there for a few lucky folks. I am happy with the money I make but I'm not skiing on unemployment at the moment haha.