If you trade actual awarded days off for more flying, under the new system you will make more, superficially (without working the old system). However, we were able to get 125% for anything over 65 before, so 75 credit would have been worth up to 77.5 for pay without any extra shuffling on the pickups in order to credit even more. It was possible under the old system to have scheduled credit of 75 and get paid 80-90+ hours after swaps and pickups.

Those who just fly their line, as awarded, will see a slight pay increase. Reserves get nothing more than what they already had until they exceed 10 hours in opentime pickups (pickups were on top of guarantee and at 125%). That nice 10-hour 2-day pickup puts you at 21 days worked and 9 off.

As a lineholder, I should be able to work 16 days and credit about 95 hours under the new system, but our pairings and trip credit are pretty terrible right now.

This wouldn't have been terrible if the negotiation had included one or more of the following -

• More tiers with ability to breakout easier
• trip/duty rigs
• day off pay was day off pay
• higher percentage rates to match competitors

just as one possible example -

for the company to not lose their butt on someone dropping to 65 and picking up premium pay for day off (if that was even an issue) it could have been 125% for day off pay, 150% for tier 1 and 175% for tier 2 and 200% for tier 3 for the workaholics - hey you bust your ass that hard you deserve it IMHO

How many more thousands of years of evolution need to happen before management realizes Richard Branson is right - take care of your people and you will have the best run business on earth.

Precisely, if you want to be the most respected regional in the industry then be the company that treats your employees the best.

But the people who fly their line and make more with the new system will still make less than what they could have done with the old system. Nothing wrong with that. It’s easier, but doesn’t pay as much.

Even if you didn’t “work” the old system or knew any special tricks it still paid more up to working 95 hours at normal credit. I’d be extremely surprised if more than 10% of the pilot group actually works that much.

At least your management pretends to like you.

At Envoy they don't even give us that courtesy.

I decided to put this new premium pay tier system in hard numbers.
Basically I’m taking the straight credit plus the extra premium credit and turning it into an “effective pay rate” for what youre really making for each actual credit hour. 75-85 hours is at 125%. 85 and above is 150%.

Current 2nd year FO is $40.70

The new system kicks in at 75 hours. So everything up to 75 hours is still $40.70 per hour.

85 hours - $41.89 effective pay rate
95 hours - $43.91 effective pay rate

3 year CA pay is $71.28 per hour

75 hours - $71.28
85 hours - $73.38
95 hours - $76.90

So as you can see, the more you work above 75 hours the higher your effective pay rate becomes... but.... well.... its still not that much. Compare this to Endeavor, Republic, ExpressJet, and Skywest, maybe a few others and you can see their normal pay rates are already higher even at straight pay. Not to mention just about every other regional offers 150% and 200% on top of their already higher pay rates for picking up opentime flying.

Also, previously we could drop to 65 hours and everything we picked up was 125% sometimes 150% if it was critical. Basically, with the new system we now have to work harder to make the same as the new system up to 95 hours, and the 150% critical pay for all intents and purposes is gone.

You’re mischaracterizing this change to the pay structure. If your scheduling strategy was to utilize the SAP to drop to 65 then pick back up for 125% scheduled day off pay then this isn’t a pay increase. But the pilots who did this were a relatively small minority.

If however you are one of the majority of pilots at PSA that primarily utilizes the SAP to adjust their schedule to be off for certain days and not to take advantage of premium pay etc then this is in fact a pay increase. A small one, but an increase nonetheless.

I found that for me personally, when I would drop to 65 with the intent to pick back up, that the trips left in open time were mostly garbage compared to if I just SAPped into a decent commutable trip to begin with. This is compounded for commuters as well as it is far better to have a known schedule in advance than to run the risk of dropping down and not finding decent commutable trips to pick up later.

Unfortunately it seems that much of the posts I see in here in the PSA Forum lately sound a bit like being in an echo chamber. Much of the views presented are very one-sided.

And it seems to be the same folks too.....


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Valid point, but I would argue if you’re truly trying to maximize your pay and/or days off the old system comes out on top. Especially since 150% critical pay will be almost non existent now. Although, even the old system sucked compared to most other regionals.

My post was mostly meant to clarify the details for new people trying to choose where to go. When people see the word “premium” in an advertisement they think, “oh that sounds nice. Maybe I can make bank”. As you can see from my breakdown of the effective pay rates based on hours flown it is a pay raise... but... I don’t know if I’d classify a 2% pay raise as premium pay. Heck, even if the 150% critical days actually show their face again I wouldn’t even consider that premium pay. Most of the time those trips are only going to pay the minimum, which is 24 hours for a 4 day. Our peers at other airlines are almost averaging that much for a typical normal 4 day trip. At least in the 21-23 hours range.

"This"

Count your posts and tell me you're not one of em.