Originally Posted by
HIREME
If you can be happy making 60-70K (Reg. CA) for the top of your career after your education investments, jump in. If you think you will have a good chance of 100K + for the majority of your career, find something else because there's a good chance it will not happen. If you want to fly and can live on 60K and be happy with that for your career then it's a good job I think. Eventually you will have 15 days off/month and make a decent salary (though for what we do and what is put into it, it's not enough IMO).
I agree.
The only other things I might add for sake of the thread is that in my opinion we are going to eventually see more downward pressure on regional captain salaries as well. Just give it another 7 to 10 years to play out.
The vast majority of new hire airline pilots and pilots that are currently working at a regional will never make it to a major and sit in the left seat during their lifetimes. When age 65 hits in 2 or so more years the majors are going to shrink and continue to outsourse/codeshare/whatever to much lower paid regionals. Again, just my opinion, but I also think the senior legacy pilots are eventually going to sell out further on scope and increase regional seat capacity to something close to 135 seats. Management will dangle a big enough carrot for them in the twilight of their careers and they will take it. In my opinion they will become international, long haul domestic, wide body only operations.
Optimistically, I see only 1 in 5 or maybe 1 in 4 regional pilots ever being able to make it up to the next level. By next level I mean the "level" we all thought we would get to by working hard and paying our dues.
All of this being said, I still love my job. I can survive and support my family on $70K. But then again I only spent a very, very small fraction of what Embry Riddle or Zero-2-Hero Flight School grads pay for their training these days. This is absolutely NOT the career I thought I was signing up for all those years ago, but no career ever is.
