$120 hour x 1.15 instructor over-ride x 12 hours/day sim x 20 days/month x 12 months x 1.07 401k = $425k

I personally know folks who are doing this. Lot of work. I passed on it because I always wanted to be an airline pilot, not a sim instructor.

Holy crap! That is way different than the instructor package that we have. Good for them.

Those union slime balls. One of the union guys at Republic several years ago eventually got a very high six-figure job in management. It was his goal the entire time.

That's a very common perk for union leadership, and not limited to the regionals.

IMO each union should have a no-compete clause for top-three officials... can't work for company in any capacity other than line pilot for ten years after leaving a union position. Maybe an exception for loss of medical, but even that's a slippery slope since it's not hard to lose your medical if you want to.

Absolutely
 

Agree wholeheartedly

135K for a 8 yr CA will not put regional cheap lift in jeapordy. 2nd yr FO at any decent mainline will beat that plus have better 401k, profit sharing and Health Insurance.

I’m still a year away from applying at the regionals so bare with me and my ignorance. I’ve looked at all regionals pay scale. I’m not seeing how $200k is possible even in 20 years as captain. One gentleman stated he’s making $135k a year as a 8 year captain? How is this even possible when the best I’ve found is $93k a year as 8 year captain?

Are you just multiplying the min guarantee by the hourly rate? At many airlines it’s easy to credit 100+ hours a month of pay. Last month I hit 145.

I think $200K would be a stretch for a regular line pilot (non-instructor), but possible with a lot of work.

You're limited to 1000 hours block per year, but that's actual taxi/flight time. Many trips have additional "soft" credit built in for duty rigs, deadhead etc. You get paid for those hours but they don't count against your 1000 hour limit. So a trip could block 24, but pay 30+

Also you can trade trips around. If the company has open time trips which are going to be hard to cover with reserves, they'll offer x1.5 time, double or even possibly triple time. If you can work one or more of those each month, you can be well on your way to $200.

You can also include 401k match if you like, another 3-7%.

But again, it's going to be a lot of work, both actual work plus spending time gaming the scheduling system (that can be as addicting as FB... )

There's more to regional economics than just hourly rate but you can do a rough comparison by dividing hourly crew cost (CA+FO) by number of seats on the plane. Since all jets fly about the same speed, this will show you why 50 seat crew economics are really not that good.

A couple things to bear in mind....

Few regional crews are at the top of their scale. That's going to be more common at mainline, so that's in favor of current regional economics.

FA's don't really count much, since more seats = more FA's and there's not a vast disparity between regional and major FA pay.

There are other factors with regionals, including MX and ground personnel which also help regional economics.