Realistic first year salary
 

Hey guys, I’m starting at PSA in two months. What’s a realistic monthly take home pay as a first year FO? I know everyone says to multiply 50/hr by 75. It’d just be nice to know what to expect including bonus and per diem, as it seems to vary quite a bit.

Take-home is almost entirely a function of your personal financial situation. Quicken.com has tax calculators. Use that.

You’ll get Perdiem 24/7 in training then be on reserve for most of the first year. Reserve = little flying = minimal per diem

Wouldn’t even factor per diem into your salary calculation, IMO.

$50 x 75 hour guarantee x 12 months = $45,000 pay based solely on Guarantee.

Per Diem is $1.85/hr TAFB (Time Away From Base). TAFB is typically between 70-80 hours for a 4-day trip. Like others have said, don’t figure per diem into your salary calculation. It’s reimbursement, not compensation.

You will rarely, if ever, fly over Guarantee on Reserve. Once you hold a Line as an FO, you will have ample opportunity to fly as much as you want. Lines range between 75 hours to 95 hours. With our pay scale, you can credit over 100 hours or as little as 65 if you choose to SAP down to the minimum.

With those facts in place, you can realistically expect a salary of between $45,000 to $60,000 before taxes, insurance, ALPA dues, 401K contributions, etc.

Hope that helps.

Devil's Advocate on the "per diem isn't compensation, it's reimbursement"

Maybe so, but that's a semantic distinction.

This is a cash flow analysis. Per diem may technically be reimbursement, but it has no connection to the expenses incurred. So if you want to not bounce checks, it very much is relevant.

But ... if you're flying 20 hours a month on reserve and half of that is 6 hour TAFB day turns, you won't be getting much per diem.

So two months, expect something in the range of $1000/month per diem. (24/7 in training) After that on reserve, unlikely to be more than a couple hundred bucks a month.

If you're potentially bouncing checks based on per diem, then you're doing it wrong.

Just call it 50K for round numbers.

Ok, stated in less idiomatic and more boring fashion

"If you want to anticipate your cash flow...."

Well, no, it’s not really semantics. If it was considered compensation, it would be taxable. Per diem isn’t taxable. The whole reason there’s a per diem system is because it’s much easier to give you $x/hr away from base assuming you’re spending money on food and incidentals than it is to process tens of thousands of receipts every month to reimburse you to the penny. They give you per diem with the assumption that you are expending money on the road to feed yourself. That’s why it’s reimbursement. If you don’t have a per diem system, you’re submitting receipts for food and such for reimbursement from the company while you are on the road doing company business.

I’m not arguing whether it is compensation or reimbursement

I am saying the distinction is not of any utility

If you got reimbursed for every meal, the system would be tedious but theoretically very simple: everything you spend the company offsets. Total cash impact - zero

But the system pays everyone the same regardless of what they spend or what they need. (6’5” man eating in white plains same as 4’ 11 woman eating in Fayetteville). So your “reimbursement” is predictable ahead of time and in no way connected to what you spend. Label it whatever you want, it is useful to know how much it is because it goes into a common pot with other company payments. You can spend it to pay half of big costs on the road, all of medium costs or twice what it costs to go cheap.

Oh and it is only tax free on overnights. 14 hour day turn you will be paying taxes on.