That’s actually and severely scary... yes I’m an FO but just NO.. nobody should be giving up on the damn approach, if it gets to that level it’s supposed to be a “Go Around, Set Thrust, Flaps 8” was what I remember being taught.. or SOMETHING better than giving it up all of a sudden at low altitude. Hope you submitted a report, I mean obviously that calls for extra training, hell I would want it if I got to be that inconfident and unable to make a semi decent decision.

 

Forced upgrades gonna get real interesting soon

 

What’s scary is when you fly with FOs who are only a month or two away from their upgrade and they still exhibit terrible techniques and at times a serious lack of situational awareness. I just shake my head. Nothing any of us are going to do about it.

 

I know we disagree on a lot of things, but I agree with you here. It took a fair bit of sapping down to manage to get myself 2 years of FO experience before I hit the upgrade.

Thanks to the Union though I'm an outlier, most guys won't be upgrading with some diversions, Winters and emergencies under their belts.

 

I wasn’t aware that we disagreed on anything?

 

Two points...

1) Just because it's better, doesn't mean that it's good. Aviation needs to be compared with other skilled professions. Our operations occur in a very fast-paced, complex, and dynamic environment. There is direct responsibility for $30-million-dollar equipment. Most importantly, there is also direct responsibility for 76 lives on board. No captain responsible for such things should be earning less than $150k per year. And FOs should be starting at half that salary. Such wages are just common sense when compared to other industries that require similar levels of experience, training, and judgment.

2) Even though I might think that the video in question MAY have come off as a little whiny or entitled, YOU only stand to gain from such negative publicity in the industry. Why bother attacking him? Scarcity of supply in pilots willing to work for a given wage is what drives wages up. If his videos keep people from showing up at a regional airline, the regional airline will have to increase pay and QOL to attract people. When you cut down or insult those who try to tell the less glamorous side of the job, you effectively become a tool for airline management.

 

Strongly disagree. This response reeks of enitlement and a lack of understanding in business and compensation practices amongst various industries.

1.) Aviation is comperable to other skilled professions. Go live on a medical intern or resident salary and tell me how you feel. You're flying a smaller plane, doing most of the scut work, getting your ass kicked by awful schedules. Cry me a river -- EVERY skilled career, be it a doctor, lawyer, or airline pilot starts out at the bottom of the compensation ladder with the worst quality of life. Stop acting like aviation is somehow more sacred than the intern prescribing your grandmothers medicine. How many hours has that intern worked, how many orders have they filled, and how many reports do they have to write for their resident? And what's their compensation?
Airline pilots have it the best we've had it in a long time, and I'm making more than my friend whos in his residency. I'm home more (and I commute). I have more free time. You arbitrarily throw out $150K as the base starting for an airline pilot, but the truth is if you got that you'd still complain. You're stuck on the hedonic treadmill, plain and simple.

2.) OR, and hear me out on this, bad word of mouth spreads based on a video. That word of mouth leads to a loss of pilots, which causes CCF to skyrocket, which in turn leads to a loss of flying when AA realizes we can't staff our routes. So, rather than providing better compensation, AA (who's in fiscal turmoil as it is) decides to start pinching pennies, and all the sudden that magical quality of life you're looking for gets further away. There's always at least two paths every story can go down. Just because you have the lofty idea that the idealistic and altruistic executives in Dallas will realize they need to float cash to PSA to solve the problem doesn't mean that's what they'll do.

The truth is, if ananyone is at fault for the poor QOL and pay, it's the pilot group. WE elected our respresentation, ratified a contract, and told the airline in black ink on paper "these are our expectations, and this is how long we expect it for."

Them's the games of being part of a union. If you don't like the situation you're in, I strongly suggest you think more clearly about who you intend to elect next.

 

No, docs have it better. Residency is long hours and low pay, but it's short and finite and at the end you instantly go from regional FO pay to major widebody captain pay at age 30 and you stay there for 30 years. (And if you get tired of your widebody captain job in ABC you can get a new one in XYZ in a couple weeks.)

 

And also, with residency you’re still somewhat learning and you have someone over your shoulder checking your work. You’re not quite on your own yet. While regional airlines might not be viewed with the “prestige” as the major carriers you’re still flying around up to 76 passengers. It shouldn’t be viewed as a learning experience. You should know what you’re doing by the time you get here. I’m sure the passengers wouldn’t feel comfortable if their captain and FO were using their regional airline as a residency type of experience.

I see the point about American parking airplanes if they cant staff them based off current rates...BUT... Delta has rates for the CRJ900. APC isn’t showing them for some reason but if i remember correctly the FO rates are higher than even Endeavor captain rates, and the Delta captain rates were in the 150-170 range, maybe more, i cant remember. Not that i think Delta be bringing the 900s to mainline anytime soon, but my point is that I don’t think Delta would have agreed to those rates just for the heck of it. If they do bring the 900s to the mainline certificate ill bet a pretty penny theyre still going to be making a good chunk of change off those flights. JetBlue and American both fly the E190, which isn’t much bigger than a CRJ900 and their rates are double to triple what we make. I don’t think we’ll ever see pay rates anywhere near that at any regional airline. I’m just saying there is a lot more room for pay increases (far beyond endeavor rates even) than what management would like to admit. And best believe American won’t be parking airplanes if they’re still making money off them, even if its less of a profit.

I also don’t think we can blame our crappy pay and work rules on the union so much. They might have a little say in work rules, but at the regional level pay rates are mostly market driven. That’s why up until 2-3 years ago every regional was taking concessions for 10-15 years straight. If they didn’t, they were “comaired” or their flying was given to someone else. Now we’re finally in a pilot friendly market, but maybe not as much as we’d like to believe. For example, we’re still filling classes with some of the worst pay and work rules amongst the regionals.

Another reason why regional pay is so low is because mainline rates are so high. Sure there’s always going to be the starry eyed fresh CFI who wants to fly a jet, but think about it... after a year or two nobody would be willing to fly for regional pay if that’s as good as it gets. The only reason why people are staying and we’re getting corporate and military guys in classes is because they know if they put up with the ridiculous regional management ****** it’ll pay off a few years down the road when they get to mainline. If mainline pay was similar to regional pay nobody would be filling classes right now.

 

You completely missed the point. Or you purposefully misquoted me to prove yours. I said a Captain should make $150k, not that $150k should be the base starting salary. I never said or implied that aviation is MORE sacred than other professions. My attitude is far from it. Just that it should pay more LIKE other professional occupations. But if you want to argue for less pay...by all means go for it.

Do your research before throwing out hypotheticals. CLT is the most profitable hub the world's largest airline. AAG is not hemorrhaging cash to pay us. Quite the opposite. They are making tons of cash because of the support that PSA provides to the CLT hub. Furthermore, the reason that they have been growing PSA is because we are already cheaper than the non W/O options.

It's not just about my ideas on the matter... If you observe the regional industry as a whole, other regional options are largely downsizing or consolidating. It starts to become pretty obvious that the remaining options for taking the place of PSA are either more expensive, or have fleet teething issues of their own. But if you want to help weaken our collective bargaining position by buying into, or even promoting management-style scare tactics, that's your right to do so...