Originally Posted by
TOGALOCK
First, welcome. Second, take whatever you hear on the line with a grain of salt. From company rumors to people telling you why they haven’t left yet. There’s a lot of tough talk from pilots about how they’re going to stick it to the company by doing “xyz”, or claims that they’re only staying for/until “xyz”. The mass hiring spree has been hot and heavy for over a year now. The reality is that if someone truly wants to leave, they already have their apps out at the big 4, maybe even FedEx and UPS, and likely has had an interview and been turned down, or has one coming up. The “I’m only staying because…” hot air is more or less the equivalent of the juvenile “I can do that too, but I don’t wanna” statement. They truly have no plans to leave, but want to sound like they’re on the bandwagon. So they claim some BS excuse for why they’re still here.
Staying because they live in base, have a good schedule, don’t want to/can’t take a pay cut due to kids, family medical problems, etc.. There’s a lot of legitimate reasons to stay here. But someone claiming that they’re only staying because they want to keep their seniority in the extraordinarily unlikely event of a merger with a company that also happens to be the same company that they left F9 for is a bunch of silly talk.
When I was a fairly junior regional FO, my relative seniority in base was awarding me trip with a mean of 15 yr captains. At the time, their pay rate was something like $115, maybe close to $120. I used to hear all the same things you mentioned and it made sense to me. Paying off the house, last kid at home is 16, seniority, whatever. Except…these very senior guys were barely clinging to a line, flying with a pretty new FO (me), doing pretty weak 4 days that started Friday and got home Monday. And it was 4 days of complaining, company this, trips that, work rules.
Quickly dawned on me that 15+ years as a captain in a CRJ, they were barely holding a line, working every weekend and holiday, 4 on 2 off, making year 2-3 FO pay at a big airline. And they seemed to hate their job and employer on top of it. It also quickly dawned on me not to ask too many questions, they probably had some skeletons or didn’t do interviews well. In a few years as FO they’d outearn and and have much better schedules. Huge part of what made me more interested in coming here and trying to be part of the growth. With new regionals pay it’ll take longer to eclipse what I made last year, but it’s contract season and I’m looking forward to whatever eventually comes.