Originally Posted by
Tropical
Well it's really none of your business, and I'm going to take your self doxxing bait under the guise of "helping you understand", but since you and your older buddies seem to have a serious lack of self awareness and awareness of anyone's situation but your own, let me show you the progression of a typical Delta hire with less than 5 years here:
Flight school in the early 2000s.
Regional airline. Took 5-7 years to upgrade and get PIC time. Thanks Age 65 and the 2008 Recession.
ULCC airline - Spirit? Frontier? JetBlue? Delta wasn't hiring much in the 20-teens and a lot of pilots were considered over or under qualified. Spent a few years there. Then covid hit.
Finally get to Delta. Took a huge pay cut from ULCC CA to DL FO. Ran up some debt first year. Can't exactly tell the wife you're selling the house and the kids that they have to go hungry because daddy got a new job. Life and its expenses go on.
Retro not Retro comes. It was 5 figures before Uncle Sam took a 35% bite and ALPA took their cut. Barely paid off the debt.
Now some seniors want to grab 2 more years and tell all of us below it tough luck. But the consolation prize is I'll get 2 more years. If I make it that long, which I doubt. It's not important that their own advancement came from those ahead of them retiring at 60 or 65 and pilots taking early retirement packages. But the seniors say quit whining because they got furloughed after 9/11 or had to sit sideways for 7 years... while we were commuter FOs making $30/hr or captains making $60 an hour and flying Newark to Buffalo in the winter in a turboprop 5 times a day.
It's likely that we see a repeat of 2008 with a perfect storm of recession and retirement age raise that brings furloughs and/or displacements. At a minimum, we stop hiring and everyone is stagnant for a few years. Stuck on reserve or stuck as a junior FO. Again.
Clear as mud?
You lost me a little when you said " Delta wasn't hiring much in the 20-teens and a lot of pilots were considered over or under qualified." From 2014-2019, we have over 5,000 pilots hired on our list and their backgrounds vary from 15,000+ hours with most of it TPIC down to sub 3,000 hours and 0 TPIC. If someone were a top tier candidate, there was a lot of hiring going on here. Also, the comparison to getting furloughed or the post Pan Am buyout with engineers for 5 years+ is weak IMO and a completely different timeline of comparison for someone who was just getting their ratings in the post 9/11 world. I flew for a commuter before Delta when we had more than 5 leg days on those turboprops. I was also furloughed during my career. The two aren't comparable even in the strangest upside down. Neither are great or awesome, but they sure aren't comparable. Every time someone tries to make that comparison for their "struggle", I think it shows a lack of perspective. But that's just me.
I'm personally not in favor of raising the age again. If I'm still having fun and I'm healthy, I might stay all the way to 65. If it stops being enjoyable long term (we all occasionally have that 1 trip), I'm out.