That's not what I'm talking about. Although at an airline with over 4,000 pilots I personally paid a HUGE QOL price for MANY years because I deferred the class date they offered me to take one two weeks later because the wife wanted to go on vacation. Three folks from my class, all senior, ended up in the same very small base that I did for about a decade. If I had taken the earlier class I would have been about 20% higher which would have saved me a lot of reserve, weekends, and holidays. They were doing so much hiring at the time that I didn't think two weeks mattered, despite what older, wiser folks told me. Now I know. When I went to the major I took the first class offered, and so far that's saved me at least a year of reserve. Learn from the mistakes of others. Usually I'm pretty good at that, but in this I'M the bad example to learn from.

One month as a legacy CA off reserve will pay at least $30K. How many months of that do you want to leave on the table?

Now there is the time value of money to consider, if you're heavily in debt now and can knock that down with a big bonus that might be worth it for peace of mind even if the long-term math doesn't work out. I could see myself doing that.

But if it's just the difference between affording a high-end honda or a low-end acura now, I'd consider the long game.

But again QOL first. That directly influences divorce, which is probably the biggest threat to your financial future.

 

Great point right there

 

I don’t think one should be making decisions in the present because they “might” make 30K a month in like 15 years. That’s not gauranteed. Might as well load up the credit cards now since you can pay them all off in a month when you’re 40.

 

I agree. According to my Union in 1999. I should have been a AA captain in 2002-4 range... glad I didn’t buy that Porsche... you never know whats going to happen. QOL over pay. And were realy talking “paper” pay. You live in base vs commute you can easily make more then commuting for a extra $3-5 a hour..

 

What are you talking about? You really don’t understand how OO pays its pilots do you? I get paid for every minute block out to block in. The OO “block or better” issue is that if I fly faster than scheduled block we get paid historical credit not scheduled block. So OO is really “historical credit or better” but I’m paid for every minute block out to block in.

 

Yes I have too, and I’ve been paid for every minute of it.....

 

Struggling to perform in the NYC? According to who?

 

Which is still a pay cut compared to the majority of the industry that we love to compare our rates to.

 

Yea, but we aren’t the only one who does it this way. That’s also a different discussion to have. I was more pointing out the inaccuracy of his post. He actually thinks that we only get paid block/historical credit which is not true at all. He actually thought that if we blocked 3 hours on a flight due to deice, flow etc that was only scheduled at 1:45 we only get paid 1:45, which is absolutely false.

 

As I said, time value of money counts. If you have debt to pay off, better do that.

If not, six months would be worth a couple peanuts less. It's all peanuts anyway.

You have to determine your own risk tolerance for industry stability (there is hard empirical data to suggest it will be pretty good for a while).