Welcome to the airline industry. It’s called seniority and that’s what you choose to sign up for with complete transparency. This would be my only gripe about this industry, coming from a life where my personal abilities and effort rewarded me with far more compensation than my peers. But now I get to laugh at my peers in this industry that choose to go the extra mile for the company because their number will never change. Happiness is still a state of mind, we all knew the rules before we agreed to play the game.

 

No doubt. My favorite thing about this industry is listening to labor complain about management and then watching the cram down on fellow aviators under the guise of seniority. Good times if one believes life is a stage and you're trying to enjoy the show..

 

I enjoy my job and where I am at. Beats the hell out of living under the sea for weeks and and months at a time. Just saying.


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That’s not what I hear from those at major/legacy airlines that I talk to. Night/day difference between regional flying and flying for a major. Regardless I work hard to diversify my income stream so that I don’t have to fly forever. I don’t want to be doing this beyond 58-60.

 

Yep, the quality of life and schedule efficiency is barely comparable. Pay scales only tell a small part of the story. Different job. I would guess the majority at majors/legacies would quit the industry before going back to a regional for the duration. They know what they didn't know..

 

It’s all perspective. It’s funny to see regional complaint threads exist when less than 15 years ago pilots would pay for training at their regional and then make $18 hour and < $40 an hour as a captain.

But yes, If you’re miserable at your regional, you’ll eventually be miserable
at your major. I’d be willing to bet money on this based on years of observation.

 

Sort of. Bigger planes generate (a lot) more revenue. The only way pilots justified very high pay was that in the dawn of the jet age the planes got larger... MUCH larger, so the pilots could rationalize that if they got A pay for flying B number of pax, they should get X pay for flying Y pax. Pilots actually didn't get paid much when they flew four engine radials with 30 pax.

In fact RJ pilot compensation is probably pretty similar to what Dan Roman got in the DC-4, accounting for inflation. It might even be better.

That was how we got to where we are, but the mainline guys are DEFINITELY in the drivers seat. They wouldn't care if regional pilots got paid more, just not at THEIR expense. So they tolerate the whipsaw while at the same time negotiating for scope to limit the impact on their careers.

That's not changing, major pilots are not going to expend negotiating capital to "save" the regional pilots, especially since there's a perception that the majority of them are younger noobs who might have a just a touch of entitlement to things they haven't earned.

As a member of the lost gen, I can certainly relate and sympathize but I also need to make up for that lost decade financially and am in no mood whatsoever to cede any of my slice of the pie to somebody who soloed when I was teaching FO's to be RJ CA's.

Any other discussion is wishful thinking... wish in one hand, poop in the other and see which one fills up first

 

There's truth in that, but frankly it's MUCH easier to be happy at a major if one is so inclined. I was usually happy regardless, although it certainly helped that I didn't expect to stay forever.

My wife is actually noticeably happier with major schedules, so that's a win if nothing else.

 

Operators are not too concerned about how compensation is sliced. They would agree to a flat scale across all airframes if the price is right. Some already do. Some pilot groups get more for flying larger equipment but divide it among everybody. Door pay is even being considered to level NB and WB pay. Those at the top are finding domestic flying more to their liking apparently. Union leadership is mostly responsible for how compensation is sliced and, I don't disagree, that's not changing very fast. But all it takes is one very ambitious go-getter to speed things up...

 

Morale is highest the closer it’s been since the latest pay increase. Morale is lowest the closer it is to the next pay increase.