2024 Regional Pilot Cumulative Compensation
 

Alright lets hear it. What'd You make this year.


SkyWest
CRJ CA
Year 6
500hrs block

$225,000 total
$40,000 in overtime

Net pay 116,000


Own investments gained quite a bit so most likely taxable income is up to about $300,000

What state do you live in where you only get to keep half of the money you earn?

One would hope they're using some lazy accounting to get to that net income math - like not including 401k elective deferrals as income or something. Otherwise it's gotta be California tax math...hopefully based on payroll deductions alone (pre-filing).

Sadly this is the correct answer

I wonder how badly regional carriers want to go back to paying 50 bucks an hour now that pilots are readily available.

I’ve recently had this conversation with several pilots at my regional. Some think it may happen, some don’t. I think it’s definitely possible that they could. And believe regional management is salivating at the idea of it. If we hit a recession or another black swan, it will absolutely happen. The ones who keep saying “nah it won’t go back to that,” don’t understand the cutthroat nature and history of regionals.

All it will take is an economic recession to hit, and then all the regionals will be looking at each other like alright, who’s gonna be the ‘test dummy’ and go first with cutting pay rates. Once a carrier or 2 decides to do it, the rest will follow. Similar to how when the AA WO’s raised the pay in 2022, the rest followed their lead, they had no choice. When there’s downward pressure on the wages, it will go in that direction.

I like how the thread is steering away from what it was intended lol

The unions won't let them do that.

We can only hope

$50? That was junior CA Pay...... it was closer to $22 for new FO's in the early 2000's

Theregionals need to takea page from the mainline legacies and copy eachothers pay scales exactly, with "me too" in case of increases.

The war cry from management when they can whipsaw is always reducing cost to keep competative. If the cockpit costs are the same, there is no cost advantage.... they need to look elsewhere to increase profits, not from employee concessions. The other total failure (of our unions) has been the pattern bargaining on the premise of "industry Standard" or "Industry Average." When one carrier, any carrier, takes a concession.... the new industry average is now lower. This means the next carrier facing "industry average" will get a pay cut further exasperating the downward trend.

Once they are comfortable that the pilot supply is sufficient, they WILL start to look to cut costs, meaning our incomes. They are already pulling back on DEC programs and hiring bonuses.

There is a temporary glut of new ATP's due tot he hiring slowdown at the legacies which will slowly resolve itself. However, we went from producting 2,000 new ATP's in 2015 to producing over 11,000 new ATP's this year. The mainline retirement and growth boom only has about 5-8 more years depending which carrier you're looking at. After that, the 11,000 new ATP's aren't going to have anywhere near the options they have now. Mainline carriers will bring back bachelor degree requirements, 1000 TPIC requirements, 6000 or more TT requirements, among other things. The higher standards will filter into the regional level as well.

It's cyclical... it's happened before, and it will happen again.

They aren't equipped to stop the whipsaw unfortunately, and the RLA isn't on our side.


To Return to the thread topic......

Months 1-6 Omni $90k
Home based but gone 16-17 days straight every month
5% match on up to 10% (and capped at $10k a year)
BC&BS Family PPO $360 month

Months 6-12 Republic DEC - $110k plus $100k bonus
4% DC to 401k (it goes to 10% over time but needs to be increased)
Based at home - rarely work OT (maybe $4k this year)
BC&BS Family PPO $800 month

Then why have a union if they aren't going to protect our pay?

In defense of the unions, they do offer significant protections regarding work rules. Yes, in years past, the unions were absolutely worthless when it came to negotiations for increased pilot pay. Hopefully it never ever goes back to that, and I don’t think it will get to the point where they will drop the wages to what they were prior to about 2015/2016. Cost of living is a lot higher now. If they do cut wages, it might easily go back to what they were right before they hiked the rates in 2022, maybe even lower than that.

For work rules, they do help protect pilots. There’s rules for the company on just about anything. Hotels for instance. They have specific standards on where they put us. Management can’t just behave like a Wild West crap bag part 91/135 operator, and drop us into a sketchy truck stop motel which is in a moderate to high crime area with drug dealing and prostitution going on, and say “deal with it, if you don’t like it, you can go work somewhere else.” Even regionals have always been pretty good at booking us in decent to even good hotels, even before they hiked the pay rates. If there is a crime that has been committed in an area near or in the hotel, that was previously low to no crime, they move us to a different hotel. This has happened on several occasions at my shop, and i always felt like they are looking after us when they book different hotels to keep us away from sketchy areas.

At my shop on reserve, on your last day on a stretch of reserve days, if nothing is assigned to you by 5:00pm, you have ‘early release’ and can go home early, even if you were originally on reserve until midnight that night. This helps commuters a lot.

Those are just one of many examples.

Don't engage with the anti-union troll. He's upset at unions, pilots and probably other things.

Oh I completely agree, but I would say that after safety, pay trumps everything else. If they can't protect our pay...

I'm not anti-union, I'm pro-choice... People should be able to choose whether they join a union, not have it forced on them. Especially when as described above the union can't seem to protect salaries (assuming that's true).

Bringing the Thread Back on Topic
 

Jan-Feb CFI at large 141:
$5,700 take home, including a solid chunk of PTO cash out.

Mar-Dec SkyWest Year 1 FO
Training March-June, Reserve June-September, Line Holder October-December
350 Block Hours Flown
$56k take home, $74k gross

Just about min guarantee plus per diem (~$3k). Funny how that math always works out. Never budget for anything beyond min guarantee folks.

Endeavor year 1/2 FO pay
800 block, $152k
Per Diem and 401k brings it over $160k for the year.
6 months of reserve, lots of pick ups, commuter.

Skywest capt year 5/6

310k projected (297ytd)

137k in 300% trip pickups

650ish block

~24 nights a month at home

reserve all year live in base

defending your contract is something they ARE good at, including protecting your pay.

you're confusing protecting your pay, with contract negotiations. One, the union has great power, the second not so much.

preventing another carrier from taking concessions to get more work & planes which means more faster upgrades is something they are NOT good at, because pilots vote what's best for them individually right now, without looking at the long term harm, because in most cases they see regionals as a temporary stepping stone, so who cares what happens after they're gone.

the national "unions" don't have the authority to tell an individual pilot group that they can't vote yes on concessions.

you do not have to join. You will however have to pay a smaller service fee for the benefits of the contract anyway.

again, they absolutely protect the contractual compensation, and they do it well.

you're mixing contract enforcement with contract negotiations. Regionals - under the current business models and RLA - have a much weaker hand then they should.
mostly due to the business model. You can't go to a Delta pilot and say take these concessions or your flying is getting transferred to United. Until the RLA recognizes the outsourced business model regionals will always always always be subject to whipsawing one against the other. This only applies when there's a surplus of pilots ready to take the job. When staffing became an issue around 2015, it slowly switched from cheapest provider to who can actually staff the flying. We have about another 5-8 years to get our act together before the whipsaw is back in full effect. ALPA & IBT are not planning far enough ahead. When I was on the ALPA BOD in the 20 teens they didn't look far enough ahead then either. We did effect some change, I got defending the ATP rule passed as a PAC priority. We also got national to create a Regional Coordinator position in the presidents office so regional unions had direct access into the presidents office without getting lost trying to work through the bureaucracy. I left in 2016 and they've done very very little long term planning since. Mostly putting out fires... 67, single pilot, NAI, and stuff like that.

but to answer your question... you wouldn't want to work at any of these airlines without a union. You complain now? I can't imagine what you'd be doing without the union. I myself was never a big union person until I worked at an airline. Every employer prior to airlines was more than fair. This industry just doesn't work that way and managers are far far too willing to look to employee concessions to increase profits and make themselves look good.