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Norwegian OSM...

Old 12-09-2018, 08:09 AM
  #41  
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Originally Posted by dera View Post
A jetBlue FO makes more than a top LH/BA A380 captain.
This is not correct
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Old 12-12-2018, 04:01 PM
  #42  
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Careful when you compare European salaries to US.
Usually, European salaries include pension (although crapy), health insurance and unemployment insurance.
In general you can deduct around 40 to 55% from the gross pay to get the net pay. This applies especially to the northern states like Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Applied Tax alone can be up to 43%. UK is much less.
While net salaries in the US might appear huge in number, still medicare or 401K have to be deducted. Taxes are significantly lower tough. Unemployment insurance? What´s that?.
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Old 12-13-2018, 03:37 AM
  #43  
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Originally Posted by Hindenburg View Post
Careful when you compare European salaries to US.
Usually, European salaries include pension (although crapy), health insurance and unemployment insurance.
In general you can deduct around 40 to 55% from the gross pay to get the net pay. This applies especially to the northern states like Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Applied Tax alone can be up to 43%. UK is much less.
While net salaries in the US might appear huge in number, still medicare or 401K have to be deducted. Taxes are significantly lower tough. Unemployment insurance? What´s that?.
Before I moved to Europe (Scandinavia) I compared my paycheck and expenses with my European wife's paycheck and expenses. Despite the significantly higher tax rate, she got a far better deal. She worked in a non-flying position for SAS and was taxed at about 47% overall. Her compensation included a 20% pension and a private unemployment insurance. Her taxes covered 100% of her health insurance, and because of the education system in Denmark, she had no outstanding student loans or to have to save for the kids education. Even though I had a lower tax rate in the states, I had a 401k contribution (that did not come close to what she had), student loan payments, health insurance premiums and copays for visits and prescriptions. On top of that there were a lot of additional little things like educational supplies and fees for kids activities that my wife never had to pay for because they are all covered under taxes. At the end of the day, my wife had a pretty sizable advantage when it came to disposable income. And because she never had to take out student loans, she had better purchasing power because she had no outstanding debt. On top of that she was guaranteed by law five weeks plus five additional days of annual vacation. So you are correct, it is very hard to make an apples to apples comparison of European compensation and U.S. compensation.

Just as an FYI, Norwegian did recently open a 787 base in Copenhagen. All the pilots there are directly employed by Norwegian, not through an agency. They are unionized, they have a 12% pension, loss of license insurance, supplemental travel insurance, five weeks of vacation. The fact that they have a different employment agreement compared to other Norwegian bases is similar to how other European airlines operate which have different contracts dependent on base and fleet type. Even British Airways has different employment contracts and conditions dependent on whether you are short haul vs. long haul or Heathrow based vs. Gatwick based vs. Manchester based.
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Old 12-16-2018, 12:04 PM
  #44  
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Originally Posted by Hindenburg View Post
Careful when you compare European salaries to US.
Usually, European salaries include pension (although crapy), health insurance and unemployment insurance.
In general you can deduct around 40 to 55% from the gross pay to get the net pay. This applies especially to the northern states like Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Applied Tax alone can be up to 43%. UK is much less.
While net salaries in the US might appear huge in number, still medicare or 401K have to be deducted. Taxes are significantly lower tough. Unemployment insurance? What´s that?.
Medicare yes. But all decent US majors now do a 15% DC which should be sufficient for retirement if you have 25+ years and will upgrade. So out of pocket not required unless you want to go above and beyond.

The current reality...

I know personally numerous dual citizens who have recently returned to the US for legacy/big six jobs. From LH, AF, EK, and a several Asian carriers.

This too shall pass of course, but right now the US is the place to be. Although parts of Europe are very nice, and some of their airlines will still provide a great living at home. Can't fault anyone for that.
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Old 12-20-2018, 08:01 AM
  #45  
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How are taxes for EU pilots? Say a BA guy and LH and AF.

Like here between Fed, State, Med, Soc Sec, those 4 you’re paying 35-40%+ of your paycheck to taxes.

How does it look for mandatory taxes on the paycheck for those pilots in Europe?
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Old 12-20-2018, 03:27 PM
  #46  
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Originally Posted by rickair7777 View Post
Medicare yes. But all decent US majors now do a 15% DC which should be sufficient for retirement if you have 25+ years and will upgrade. So out of pocket not required unless you want to go above and beyond.

The current reality...

I know personally numerous dual citizens who have recently returned to the US for legacy/big six jobs. From LH, AF, EK, and a several Asian carriers.

This too shall pass of course, but right now the US is the place to be. Although parts of Europe are very nice, and some of their airlines will still provide a great living at home. Can't fault anyone for that.

I'm in the process of finding women for my buddies in Europe to get them that US passport so they can fly here ..
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Old 12-20-2018, 03:29 PM
  #47  
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Originally Posted by ShyGuy View Post
How are taxes for EU pilots? Say a BA guy and LH and AF.

Like here between Fed, State, Med, Soc Sec, those 4 you’re paying 35-40%+ of your paycheck to taxes.

How does it look for mandatory taxes on the paycheck for those pilots in Europe?

Taxes are high, BA, LH and AF pilots pay an average 40-45%.
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Old 02-11-2019, 06:10 PM
  #48  
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Originally Posted by NEDude View Post
Did your friend tell you what most pilots make in Europe? Pay in Europe is significantly lower than it is in the States, even for the legacy airlines. If you hate Norwegian because of pay or contracts, you need to hate every single European airline. Even those Lufthansa and British Airways guys flying the 747s and A380s are making significantly less than wide body pilots at United, Delta and American. But of course ALPA will not tell you that. And I doubt ALPA is telling you what Eurowings and TUI pilots are getting paid to fly wide body airplanes to and from U.S. destinations.

Because boys and girls fly planes in Europe!! cadet programs..etc..

In the US we have a completely different process.. I got hired at UAL with 9K hours...9 years at a regional and 2 at a major before UAL.

207K on 4th year pay..with another 16% in retirement contributions..
14-15 days off per month.

Men and Women fly planes in the US..sorry to sound arrogant.

Every European pilot needs to read Flying the line, volumes 1&2.
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Old 02-12-2019, 01:52 AM
  #49  
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Well, there are of course structural differences. Not much in terms of general aviation, nearly no regional airlines, the smallest type that is commercially viable is either a 737 or an a320, everything else would have to be cross financed by someone, and that is not going to happen, especially with a low cost sector that is much bigger than in the US, where it hovers around 25% of the market, while it is around 35 to 40% in Europe without any signs of stopping in growth.

And of course, since we haven't used paper cheques in more than 30 years, there wasn't any night freight business in small planes to fly useless pieces of papers around the continent.

Not to mention, airlines have been hiring cadets since WWII, trained them themselves, eventually outsourcing those schools and therefore are very comfortable with that. And yes, that was lead by airlines like Lufthansa, British Airways and Air France, not to mention the smaller ones like KLM, Swissair and Swiss as well as Austrian and the Sabena when it still existed. In fact, the MPL, which allows cadets with just 50 hours of experience to fly A320s on the line, was mainly developed by Lufthansa.

And of course, it is quite a diverse continent, with differing labor laws in each of the many tiny countries, different languages, wildly differing income levels and so on. In fact, even in Germany the average income per year is just over 38.000€, and being able to earn in excess of 170k after just 5 years out of flightschool piloting an A320 for a kinda smallish airlines (just 300+ A320 family aircraft growing by roughly 8% each year while turning a profit for 20 years running) is not a bad deal at all. Especially considering that the average yearly salary within the same union can be as low as 9000€ (romania).

And of course, there is unionization. But it doesn't necessarily help. Lufthansa mainline pilots went on strike 14 times in their last dispute. In the end they signed a contract that lowered their T&Cs by 15% on average. That has been just a year ago, amid record profits of their company.
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Old 02-13-2019, 02:55 PM
  #50  
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Originally Posted by PilotGR View Post
Because boys and girls fly planes in Europe!! cadet programs..etc..

In the US we have a completely different process.. I got hired at UAL with 9K hours...9 years at a regional and 2 at a major before UAL.

207K on 4th year pay..with another 16% in retirement contributions..
14-15 days off per month.

Men and Women fly planes in the US..sorry to sound arrogant.

Every European pilot needs to read Flying the line, volumes 1&2.
Yes you do. The legacies carriers in the EU still have defined benefit plans. Most of the EU regionals are on the legacy seniority list. KLM retirement plan is you stop working at age 57 and get 65% for the rest of your life. Not something I will get. Be proud of flying for $20/hr at a crappy regional and having to wait 9 years to make a decent pay check.
Selling out half the domestic flying and promoting "Flying the line", priceless
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