I didn't even read the thread, so parden my bantoring.

There is no shortage of pilots. BUT, there is a shortage of pilots willing to work for $19,000 (below poverty level) a year. Make that $60,000 a year and I bet the market will be flooded with pilots.

 

THANK YOU!!!!! SERIOUSLY!

I'm not working for 19,000 a year... or anything less than 45k a year my first year... and that's still not cutting it! I have bills to pay, I dont honestly know how ANY of you do it. Rent, insurance, GAS (holy cow, what an unexpected factor), FOOD, come on seriously, rammen noodles or what? I like steak once a month you can't live on 1800 a month like AAE is offering. "oh but we'll give you the choice of domiciles." they tell me... I said "yeah, living in south florida on 1800 a month with a wife, and all the responsibilities associated, I need more money, sorry." I would have LOVED to work for those guys and I had to turn away because they were going to pay me peanuts, no pun intended. Like I have said in posts 6-12 months ago (last time I was really looking at this site)

HEY AIRLINE INDUSTRY,
SHOW ME THE MONEY

 

If you're single, or have a working spouse with no kids, its not THAT hard to get by on 23-25k. If you have children or your spouse doesn't work, it is very difficult. I didn't have any problem last year (was married the last 6 months) making ends meet, even with 600/mo in student loan payments every month, and wasn't starving myself or eating tons of ramen either...but I lived in the midwest which is quite a bit cheaper than South Florida. You definitely won't be living a life of luxury your probie year, but if you know how to properly budget (and have avoided large-scale debt) you can do just fine. What I don't understand is how married folks with young children survive their first year at CAL...I guess you take the first year knowing you'll more than make it up after that.

Are we underpaid on the whole at the regional level? YES. Some pilots and pilot groups, however, are fighting hard to raise the compensation toward where it needs to be. All pilots need to support those efforts to return pattern bargaining to the industry.

 

I work a pretty good desk job because and only because I can't make my student loan payment on airline pay. It's too bad, I think would make a good airline pilot. At this point the only flying I do is a little skydiving flying. I figure it will be several years before airline pay at the entry level bumps up. Even then it won't be much, they will simply offer more one-time incentives. The airlines are very reluctant to bump up payscales, because once they do it can't come back down. A similar thing happens at my corporation. They want you to work hard and reach for the sky but they do not want to raise your base pay. They will gladly give you a bonus this year, heck how about every year, but you can forget anything more than a skimpy base payraise no matter how much you achieve. It simply cheaper to give bonuses once twice thrice or indefinitely than it is to commit to a base pay raise that never goes away. They are not stupid and it's all about the money. When airlines determine that one-time incentives are not working anymore, just watch as the payscales go up.

The same thing happened a number of years ago in the trucking industry. For many years the base payscale for truckers was in the neighborhood of .20-.30 cents a mile. A driver shortage occurred in the 90's, and you started seeing the inevitable sign-on incentives. $500 sign on bonus, new truck, extra good route, guaranteed minimum miles, that sort of thing. But the shortage continued to the point where most companies were really losing money and freight was not being moved. Guess what, in 1998 the payscale finally bumped up to over .50 cents a mile and has been there ever since. In that case, the first company to do it was JBHunt, and then soon after all the others followed. For the first time you started seeing low-seniority truck drivers starting out at over $50k. No trucking companies folded because of this policy, and in fact most have prospered despite the increases in fuel.

 

Yeah I guess in theory you can survive; IF you sell everything you owe on, sell everything you OWN to pay off small credit debts, etc. Or, you could simply go corporate for the first few months/years, jam out some serious hours, have a LOT of fun (no schedule though!), and be experienced on both ends of the industry and have something to fall back on if the airlines ever go through hard-ship again which is probable. I'm just under 50k/yr non-salary as an FO and just under 75k/yr as a captain. I won't complain or suffer on that. Nor will I "settle for less pay" and take a step BACKWARDS in my lifestyle. Not happening. Maybe a little, if I went to SWA, etc where the pay if not so shabby and the next year be where I'm at today, then i'll sacrifice a little in the name of retirement.

I really gotta hand it to you guys, though, I admire your ability and self-control to be able to live on that kind of pay and NOT go into debt in the meantime. Seriously, kudos.

 

thats hilarious, very very true and sad, but hilarious

 

THAT IS SIC! Right there is about $60,000/yr in salary tied up in Mickey D's. I'm a size 2, they are about a size 2 "grand." Ooof Dah!

 

I think poverty level is about 15k for a single person,

and if your in this for money, your in the wrong place.
I expect to make 200k a year, but not till im 40, about 20 years from now

 

You better check those expectations otherwise you're gonna have yourself set up for a hellacious disappointment at middle age...

 

Third from the left is cutest...