Originally Posted by Cujo665

You know things aren't great when guys who intended to make a career here, are looking around, in at least one case so far, a CA here left for a regional street captain job based at his home with a $100k bonus to boot.

Even frontier is throwing a $50k bonus. If guys live in one of these bases, the LCC's and even some of the regionals are real jobs these days. Legacies are hiring Omni guys almost as fast as they apply. If Omni wants to maintain staffing (and this goes for ATI & ABX too) then ATSG needs to tell Ford & Harrison to knock off the BS and get it done.

Omni used to be the best kept secret in 121. Was the highest first year pay in the entire industry, that's gone. It was worth the slightly lower pay and slightly worse work rules to have such a stress free lifestyle. Well, the slightly lower pay and work rules are turning into significantly lower pay, even lower than regionals. Even our work rules are falling way behind. That all ain't good.

It's still a good job, but for military, corporate, regional and lower tier LCC guys, there's no reason to come here anymore unless they specifically want to fly troops globally. They'll just go straight to the legacy or upper tier LCC of their choice. Even other ACMI's have monumentally better contracts thee days. Hourly rates don't tell the whole stories. New hire FO's at Atlas were making $27k per month during Covid with all the soft money over rides.... ours were at $128ph x 64 = $8,192 per month. So, rates aren't everything guys, it's the work rules and soft money in ACMI that makes huge differences. Even after Covid, their soft money and over rides still bring their pilots in well above ours.

Yeah, we're compensated well compared to other careers, but we aren't compensated industry average incomes anymore for airline pilot careers. Amerijet, of all places, just beat us in total income. That needs to change, or we'll become what the regionals used to be; The training program for somebody else.