Originally Posted by
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I found the Pan Am contract for various years some time ago. It was interesting going through it. At the absolute peak of their pay, the 747 CA was hitting $500k in todays dollars.
Thing is, that was the very absolute peak, it lasted for just a few years (at most) and there were very few of those jobs.
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That doesn't even touch on how much better the current job is, as we don't have to endure yearly layoffs in the low seasons anymore (that was SOP back then).
So top end senior UA Capts were to make $80,000 in ~1977, a current inflation adjusted amount of $440,000. I think we can all agree that that is only the lower end of NB pay these days, not a senior triple CA.
The 80's were a bloodbath, with de-regulation coming later in the 70's that saw the rise of discount carrier SWA and bankruptcies and liquidations galore.
My dad made $200,000 at PAA in the early 1980's as a 747 Captain. Roughly $600,000+ in 2024 dollars. Lasted for a very short time.
Yearly layoffs in the slow season? Yeah, he went through that once in the 1950's. But the mid 1960's it wasn't a thing even with him being a newbie at 2 other major airlines in consecutive years (1963, 1964). PBI had furloughs every winter going into the early 1980's??? Summer flying to ACK and MVY was much busier than the winter schedule in Florida so manning had big swings.
Frank Lorenzo was a huge factor in the late 1970's until the early 1990's. Operated around 15-20% of the entire industry, with almost 500 a/c under his control, while the next largest airlines had around 250-300 a/c.
https://airlines.org/wp-content/uplo...14/08/1987.pdf