Envoy union boss not happy with bonuses:
 

It's not just the bonuses. It's the pay after the bonus runs out and how crappy the company treats people while they're here.

None of the AAG WO union leadership or line pilots are happy. AAG insists on keeping its head so far up its own arse it is almost incredible.

For starters, who in the hell is the extra $5,000 going to attract that didn't/wouldn't of already come for the $10,000? Second of all, by the time they finally figure this out, time will be running out for attracting new hires.

What is needed is actual hard pay increases and contractual improvements. Raise first year FO pay to $35 /hour and top it out at $45 /hour. 100% deadhead, min day with no carve-outs, and 200% open time pay would be a good start. And did I mention commutable high-credit lines?

Cutting it short...

It should be

$40
$42
$45
$50

If you made it to yr 4, then you should be compensated more since they felt short of the 2.5/3yr upgrade.

I'd lean more towards:
$60
$62
$65
$70

THANK YOU. How much do lawyers and doctors get paid after years of expensive training and experience? How many lives are in their hands every day???

How much would a mainline pilot get paid to fly the same airplane? The numbers should at least be much closer to that..

To be clear, I'm not arguing against higher pay. Because it is simply what the market is demanding. But to compare us to doctors is ridiculous. We don't incur the amount of debt nor are we required to go through the same type of schooling doctors are. And this job certainly isn't brain surgery.

I have over 2500 hours that I can attribute to 135/121 time. From what I understand on the APC profile of Envoy, I have a chance to be hired at Envoy with a 25k bonus?

And honestly, a lot of lawyers only make about as much as a 5 or 6 year regional CA. And doctors as much as a senior mainline FO. Not the best of comparisons if you ask me.

2 year commitment on the bonus . If you leave prior you owe them 15k

I know a lot of Nurses that make more then the Doctor they work for!! Doctors have to have a lot of insurance!!!

Not sure if that was directed at me, but committing to two years after a sign-on bonus is much better than paying 10k to get a CJO at a regional.
(I was there during the dark ages of PFT. I have never seen the industry so vibrant)

And after further review, it appears the sign-on bonus for prior 135/121 experience is capped at 10k.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/pf/jobs/doctors-pay/

It's 2016. Try about 400k as a doc. And most of them just make sure aunt Jenny doesn't have ingrown nails.

Don't know when you last checked salary ranges but piloting isn't even top 50 anymore.

They will have to offer a $30000 sign-on bonus plus all the benefits that my current regional offers so that I would be willing to consider the possibility of jumping ship to either Envoy, PSA or Piedmont.

Most of the data in those analysis are skewed. I know two doctors. Both out of their residency. Neither make close to $400,000. They each make about $250,000 - $300,000 /year. Surgeons make that much. And some certainly make more. One of my best friends dads became a health insurance advisor and gave up his own practice because of the cost of insurance.

Doctors.. like us.. right place right time.. difference between being a vascular surgeon and family doc... nothing wrong with the family doc.. but having a small practice is tough. Insurance companies are cheap, medicare/Medicaid payouts are tough and you need a dedicated staff member just to sort it all out. Office space where I live is extremely expensive. My friend is lucky if he clears 100k a year in his practice. That said, there are plenty of ways he can earn a living if he wanted to end his practice or stop practicing medicine all together. He can work in pharmaceuticals, a health director, or clinical trial coordinator. Hell, he is thinking about just opening a diner he hates his job so much.

That being said, AAG strategy is at a pivotal point and I am not sure they will be able to get in front of the 8 ball. Once they start hiring outside of the flow, I feel they will need to based on the rumors I have heard, the whole flow and the WO second rate pilot scale will take a big hit.

The WO model and second rate pay scale is great when pilots are in demand and supply outweighs need. In a RAA posting the RAA members required a bit over 5000 total new hire pilots for the 2015 calendar year. 2015 only produced less than 3000 new hires with over 35% of them being lateral moves. Therefore, there were only approximately 2000 non prior 121 new hires for RAA members. Sorry I can't look up the link or copy the data right now but its in the RAA website... public area I believe.
I would say just keep applying where you want to go every month whether your a captain or FO. Its only a matter of time when someone will get desperate enough to hire a shlob like me.

Is a bonus still subject to a union dues deduction? If not, THAT is the real reason why a union boss would object to it.

Another example of how the un-savvy get taken to school by the media.
You gush positive things here.

The industry is different now, and changing rapidly. If AAG doesn't want to lose pilots to the JB spirit types, they need pay more, and treat pilots like humans and not slave labor.

To only compare the amount of debt incurred between the two occupations is ridiculous. Doctors don't incur the same amount of liability if they screw up. How much is the airplane worth? How much are the passengers worth???? And then there's everything on the ground....

Some do incur the same amount of debt.

Yes we do less schook, but how many spent years flight instructing, banner towing, flying checks etc, just to get their first commercial flying job? Sounds like an internship to me kinda of like residency......

Yes this job isn't brain surgery, but we have more lives at risk in a day than most doctors do in a month. Remember Cologan? One mistake and our job, our lives are done. A doctor makes a mistake he fills out some insurance form and goes back to work the next day.

Not just comparing, but we should be compensated for what we have done to get here, and what our job entitles us to do. The longer we hold ourselves short of our true worth the longer management won't change their thinking. Don't sell your profession short. You are a professional so demand to be paid like one.

I agree, except that it's obvious the market cannot bear higher pay. Flying for many is an elastic demand.

That's false. Demand for domestic lift had never been higher and the market has no idea what it can bear but in the next 5 yeasts it's going to be tested.

Further global supply of pilots it's shorter than the us. Asia pacific Airlines are paying better. Middle East Airlines are paying way better.

So long as the regional pilots keep showing up for work and keep falling over each other for the "quick upgrade" or SJS the company leadership will continue to do the least it possibly can for the employee groups. As we've seen, only when they desperately need pilots do they start throwing out bonuses or raising pay, and not a second sooner than necessary. And note - those bonuses are temporary. As soon as they find they don't need them or find a way around them the extra cash is gone. That could happen a lot of ways, and one of them is consolidation.

If costs and thus prices increase, there will be less demand because people will fly less. Econ 101.

The Flight Crew making an extra $40/hour isn't going to make tickets prices skyrocket.

Exactly the average cost of the flight crew on a fifty passenger Jr. Is about 150 to 200 dollars. Fuel and maintenance and lease agreements are the higher cost.

The goal of the regional labor force is to keep many pilots away from mainline until they are in their 40s, therefore not collecting top pay for many years.

The goal of us wholly owned pilots should be to unite all three pilot groups under one common association and push the boundaries of the railway labor act. Unfortunately three separate unions are not capable of uniting the three pilot groups and what do we do right now... Oh those psa pilots suck... Those eaglevoy guys suck.. Those piedmont guys.. well they smell. No they really stink it's terrible.

We have to stop blaming the other group for the crap show we are in and which group did what first. We need to unite the groups.

The only way I could agree on this is if AAG do a list by Company Seniority. And people will flow according to their company seniority, not by their WO seniority.

I know many at PSA and PDT wouldn't be down for this, but I think a unified WO union would be worth this sacrifice. I'm probably one of the few who would say that though.

Which is why a merge is far from happening, at least at this point. It would be another seniority fight that AA doesn't want. I would be for relative seniority only, so they may as well absorb us first. Otherwise let it burn to the ground.

So, the company would facilitate the uniting of the three WO pilot groups that would ostensibly make them stronger against the their management's and/or AAG ?

In all likelihood, this will occur anyway, but at the behest of the AAG, not three fragmented pilot groups and when all their ducks are lined up. In that case, they would negate any increased strength by a long-term contract that supersedes the present separate contracts (including the Envoy PP) and agreement by all groups to flow at a nominal rate and by seniority, but that seniority will be a by-product of arbitration (SLI). This is what occurred in the past with the BizEx acquisition. As Envoy shrinks, I could see the merger of Piedmont which brings some very senior pilots, but a smaller group EXACTLY like the Simmons/BizEx merger and then run 2 WO's or perhaps merge all three. The other option is to play whack a mole like now by jacking around flying and assets as each carrier shrinks at different rates.

Considering ALL regionals will shrink as the pool of available pilots continues to evaporate (which is already now a puddle), it's not a matter of if, but how fast the AA WO's collapse and then morph. On a related note, AA is in the analysts doghouse with a share price target of a feeble $19 making all those billions in stock buy back lost money and it's becoming increasingly obvious AA may be becoming another house of cards with grossly excessive debt and falling revenue buttressed by bad decisions. It's just my opinion, but hinging your future on AA as THE place to be stability and compensation wise may be a mistake. I think another of the bad decisions in play that has yet to flop is AAG's doubling down on RJ's as opposed to Delta and United moving in the other direction where there are future resources.

We could be in the beginning to middle stages of another trip to the past and AA's past is very troubled indeed.

I second those payrates or go out of business.

Haven't flight instructed many MDs have you.

One. He was a surgeon who owned his own Cirrus. And he was an awful pilot. But he made a good amount of money. He also told me that he made a lot more than average doctors.

You're exactly right. jerry glASS has proven over and over that pilots are a fickle, short-sighted bunch. Dangle a little cash in front of them in exchange for long term concessions and they're on the hook for years to come. Your union is entirely at fault for allowing this garbage to happen over and over.

Aerospace does require an almost comparable level of education and discipline. The problem is that pilots are given a wide latitude of authority and non-supervision allowing them to get intellectually and operationally complacent. Also, it's "easy" when everything goes right. Even then, how often are you breaking requirements? Are you filing bird strike forms every time, are you reporting when you vacate an assigned altitude, are you doing a complete and proper brief every single time, are you using proper callouts every single time without exception, are you dealing with aircraft discrepancies strictly every single time or are you "deferring" them until it's convenient for the company or your commute home, are you turning on anti-ice strictly when the book says to do so, etc....?

You make your money in dealing with abnormal or emergency situations where you are required to do it correctly. This means that you have to have a lawyer level understanding of all the rules and regulations as well as an encyclopedic mastery of your flight manuals in addition to everything you would have learned in an undergraduate aviation degree. If we actually enforced the rules, there would be a gross amount of malpractice (the equivalence of it). So, please don't say it isn't brain surgery or some other analogy like it. If you can't explain supercooled droplets in theory and practice like you would hear in a college science class, then you are dangerous by virtue of academic insufficiency. Demeaning our own profession is a big problem for us which is why regional pilots get treated like garbage (it's their own fault). Act respectable, demand respect, and know everything there is to know. If you think the job is easy, then you are probably complacent or simply inexperienced.

Worthy goal, but you only get what you can negotiate. You have to be ready to literally shut the company down before your no-spicka-da-english guinea pig of a CEO knows what hit him.

Don't sell yourself short. You most certainly can compare yourself with a doctor. It's this kind of attitude that stifles the profession.

The day to day mundane of this job is completely black and white. Right and wrong. I'm not going to post my personal opinions of different peoples characteristics and flying styles. I fly standard. The way the book says to do it. Even if I don't 100% agree with something in there. Because that's what I'm paid to do. So please tell me more about how I'm one of "those guys"...

Notice the VP of Ops public statement still claiming 2.5/5.x. I guess he isn't aware of the lack of new hires and in general, the dumpster fire Envoy has become.