SO is it worth going corporate while you have to pay for your type rating...

Don't go to ERAU. Its a waste of money, and you will have way more fun at a normal university. Also there is like a 5% chance you will make 26k right out of college unless you flight instruct at a university. I'd plan on under 20k followed by under to slightly over 30k for the next 5-6 years. This is around an average of 2k a month before taxes, so probably 1500 take home. Your student loan payment will be 600-900 per month depending on if you want to pay it off before you die or not. That leaves $600-$900 a month to live on. Not doable without help in most of the places you will be forced to live as an airline pilot, assuming you don't commute.

How anyone goes to these schools is just beyond me. Do your research. The pay being talked about in this thread is from a Major Airline Pilot. You won't be reaching this horrible pay until probably 7 years in the industry at best. Either way, good luck and remember that you should work to live, not live to work

Going out on a flame bait limb here....(been in the industry 30 years so do I have the right?)

The terrible world that US airlines are: I used to think it was capricious management. Or ALPA. (ALPA is a failure. Let's admit it, but then remember, ALPA is "us").

The problem is: pilots. Pilot mentality and the basic pyramid scheme its become. As long as there is one pilot making 200k as a captain, and everyone else is making 20K as doing whatever else, they will think "I'll be the exception, it'll be me". I've now seen or heard or it, in many fashions, for a great number of years.

Possible solution with two words: wildcat strike, and be willing to go out for 6 months. (Oh, yeah, here comes the flames). A wildcat 6 month strike. And what's the worst outcome? Make you work in the airlines, it was just like like a quote from a Marine grunt in Vietnam saying when he faced with a discipline problem: "what are they, going to do to me, send me to Vietnam?"

OK, crucify me, but its been 13 years of dramatic erosion of the "profession". I am open to some new ideas.

Why include the years you had zero ($0.00) income into the average? Where you unable to work, did UAL prevent you from working, did you work and not get paid? I'm just curious...

It would have to be an industry wide strike. What would be the ramifications of participating? Could you be kicked out of ALPA? Fired without recourse? Sent to jail?

Don't get me wrong, if there were enough people willing to do this I'd be totally down. Just wondering what the long term ramifications would be.

What the Marine grunt didn't think of was Leavenworth for 10 years. Not saying that jail time for wildcat strike, just saying there are bad outcomes not planned for.

GF

That being said, for a regional FO striking would net a pay raise in almost any scenario.

That's the best advice I read on this forum in months. I really hate to say it but this industry is is a deep stall ! Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, airline pilots are becoming glorified bus drivers...and I don't mean Airbus "drivers".

There are a lot of reasons, some caused by the collective pilot groups and some by external forces over which no one had any control. It doesn't matter. Pay, benefits, retirement, working conditions have all changed and not for the better. The bad news...it isn't going to improve.

I was damn lucky to have been in the cockpit during the late 1980's, 90's and even into the early 2000's when "life was very good". I say that only for the young folks aspiring to get into this profession. Don't look at that time frame and think "it's going to bounce back". It isn't ! Seeing what has transpired in the past few years makes me sick to my stomach and so glad I'm out.

G'Luck Mates

What a crok of shiiite! Care to bring a fedex/ups/swa/dal pilot with the same hire date w2 to the party? Pilots are like everyone else, attorneys, doctors, architects, engineers. Luck of the draw and economic conditions dictate your "luck" when it comes to earnings. United got clobbered and you paid the price, believe me in 1998 united was a dream job for most pilots but stuff behind everyone's control happened and here we are. It might suck for some of us but many are having dream careers, heck co 2005 hires are now 737 captains at new ual/co wages, the same company you work for now. I was a 757 captain at little awa until the east pilots decided to steal our union and work for less, no one cares and the world moves on. Dal and Ual have made great strides to get us back recently that insure that for the lucky this is still a very lucrative career.

I read more sob stories on this website, I guess it's true what they say, APC is for airline pilots crying. Then again, I'm not an airline pilot so I might cry too. Military pilot though and being away from family is the norm but of course I chose my life.

As for the ERAU kid, why not try military flying? It's free...so to speak. You will pay for the training in other ways but the flying can be like nothing else.