Considering staying at my regional?
 

Regional Captain here with a job offer at JetBlue, and I like the company, have for years. However, when it looks like I’m going to soon be making in the ballpark of 200k at my regional, I’m not sure JetBlue is a win from a pay standpoint.



I built a spreadsheet comparing my regionals TA to JetBlues current payscale, assumed 85 hours a month at either company and an upgrade time of five years if I go to JetBlue. Based on that I didn’t even break even in terms of total gross cumulative pay at ten years with their current payscale. Adding a hypothetical 15% pay increase got me to breaking even at 7-8 years, and adding 20% got me to breaking even at 6 years.



So if the pay is actually less (at least for a good while) at JetBlue why go? Well QOL could be one good reason, and by QOL I mostly mean days off, I have just 11 this month, the new TA if passed, would guarantee me a whopping 12. However, most current JetBlue bases mean commuting for me, which mitigates many of the QOL gains. Yellow Airbus bases could work better for me, but we don’t know when or even probably 100% sure if they are going to open up. For example what if there ends up being some stipulation in the contract keeping blue and yellow pilots from going to each others bases for a time? What if the DOJ shuts the entire merger down? (Probably not, but you never know)



With most regionals paying their captains in the ballpark if 200k now, or soon, are majors like JetBlue going to make some fairly drastic increases to their FO pay scales to keep people like me coming in the door, or are they simply going to just hire FOs, captains willing to take the pay cut and so on?

You should stay. I just flew with a 19 year xjet guy who didn’t like being an FO. I’m sure he would have done fine staying at express jet.

Not trying to sway you one way or another— but $200k is pretty easy to get year 2-3 if you want to mildly hustle. If you want to total flica ***** it, you can do 300k+ in the right seat…..

Sounds foolish to me.

Does your spreadsheet assign a probability to your regional existing in 10 yrs time, and jetblue for that matter? That could swing the needle a bit.


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I can’t engage this stupidity. Stay at your regional.

I think the better question is “How long will the temporary TAs last.” If the answer is less than your break-even date, then Coming to JetBlue wins. If your answer is longer than that or “forever,” then majors like JetBlue must outdo, and then JetBlue wins again.

So….come to JetBlue is my advice.

A second thought: if the answer is “forever,” I think it safe to assume that regional-using legacies will have to either increase ticket prices fairly substantially, or abandon the regional model altogether. Both cases favor non-regional-using majors like JetBlue.


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JetBlue for real.
Who owns your Regional?
JetBlue owns JetBlue…..and Spirit.
You’re making short term money now, you need long term money if you’re under 55.

What % does your regional put into your retirement?

I worked at a regional and made good money. People considered it a safe place to stay for a whole career. Then mainline took away all our flying and shut us down. No one had any idea it was happening until the second it was announced.

Staying at a regional vs going to someplace where the name on the plane matches the paycheck is stupid. Period.