Originally Posted by SkyHigh

Last night I watched a fascinating news documentary on the PBS show Frontline. The subject was on the crisis our country faces of retiring baby boomers. United Airlines was one of the featured companies. They described in detail how badly the employees were raided and what they face as a retirement future.

That old line of thinking might of worked when airlines were offering to pay a full retirement however with those going away even one furlough would be devastating to an employee managed retirement plan. The experts say that if all you have is a 401K then we all should be saving fifteen to 18 percent of salary, every year, for 30 years in order to be able to maintain our standards of living throughout retirement.

As of 6 years ago AirApps listed the average age of new hires at the majors as 37 years old. My guess now is that the new hire age is hovering around 40. 20 years at a major while enduring a furlough or two is miserably short of what is needed to save up for ones own retirement. The fat paycheck of perhaps 120K or more during the last 10 years as a pilot isn't even close to being able to plug the hole.

We all endure a decade or two of low wage abuse because we have in mind that once we make it to a major airline we will be saved. One of the biggest benefits was that they paid a full retirement. Now that those days are gong away and pay has been cut considerably it is important to reevaluate the career and its true compensation. By my calculations even if you do everything right and make it to the majors by the average age you will most likely be holding an empty bag at 60. In the new age when evaluating an airline career you need to subtract from the base salary for taxes, costs of employment, cost of education and training and 17% for self funded retirement.

You would be better served by putting the 150K spent on education and training to become a pilot into savings and spending the next 30 to 40 years working at McDonald's since it seems that is where most retiring airline employees are headed anyway. McDonald's a great 401K. In 20 years I might be thanking my lucky stars that my airline dreams were mercifully killed off while I was still young enough to be saved.

SkyHigh