Regional Pay Chart Comparison
 

There's a blog on Do I have a future here? regarding regional pay and how they rank among other regionals. I'm quite surprised at how some of the regionals ranked.
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Interesting data, but keep one thing in mind-you are not comparing apples to apples. Some of these are pay rates for 99 seat jet pay while others are 19 seat turboprop pay. I am not arguing with your data. Just keep that in mind as you interpret it.

Yeah the blog explained how the data is extrapolated. Basically its based on the cheapest paying airplane which typically are the most junior airplanes (which you are more likely to get hired for). Considering however that most people are qualified to be hired by any of these regionals, and how some people that have worked for companies like Horizon and Expressjet now work for companies like Great Lakes, it's interesting to see the difference.

Some are the same airplanes like this data is based on Horizon's Q400 pay and Colgan's Q400 pay.

How is it that some of the top regionals are showing less than $35K for 3rd year pay? i'm at one of them on 3rd year pay and I cleared $40K without working much at all. What are those figured based on?

For the 3rd year, it's hourly rate (of the cheapest airplane) x line guarantee x 12 months. And it doesn't include per diem which can be between $3000 to $6000 extra.

I wouldn't put to much weight into the graph. It's very possible to work only 75hrs every month or average over 100 hours a month on pay depending different factors.

In 2007 I averaged 105hrs credit a month of pay, blocked 780 hours on the year. This year, with the schedule reductions, only 88 hours of credit a month on average. Even though my hourly rate is $4-5 an hour higher, I made significantly less than 2 years ago.

Colgan's FO payscale is the same for the Q, Saab, and 1900 (though they have been eliminated). We shall see if the contract changes that.

What the chart doesn't show (nor could it really) is how work rules and contract affect credits.

What it DOES suggest is chasing a job may not be worth it. If a guy lives in Houston for example, moving or commuting to a Masaba job rather than living in base working for Colgan might not be worth 10k over three years.

At risk of being accused of being a koolaid drinker (I'm not) I'll point out that SKW pay includes bonuses which are probably worth 10-15% above base pay. These kick in over the first three years. I'm know some regionals don't pay a cent over hourly rate, and I know other regionals have similar bonuses.

This chart is useless without taking that into account, not to mention work rules...

Holiday Pay
Performance Bonuses
Deadhead Pay
Vacation drops
Rigs (if any)
CANX Pay
Repo Pay

Etc, etc it all adds up.

It's not that hard to understand, all these graphs are based on your min guarantee pay rate, whatever that maybe. Isn't that what we should all build our lives to live in? After all, maybe some months you'll be able to snag more flying, some months you might want to take it easy. Of course there will be variables, but all this looks at is min pay guarantee. As a wisconsin FO, on second year pay (who works his a** off), I'll clear 50k this year. An example on how to do this? Right now I"m on "vacation" but traded it in for a 4 day that time and half that's worth 23 hours of credit, plus I picked up a one day trip at 6.5 hours. Yeah, it sucks, but this week alone I"ll make about 1,500 bucks.

Agreed, a more fair comparison would be W2s and how many hours flown(or scheduled) per dollar of compensation.

C5 (commutair)
 

None of that fancy dead head pay or pay above minimums stuff matters at the ole C5. They don't get any of that fancy stuff so they will be in the bottom of the barrel no matter what happens.

The Horizon ranking is misleading. They only have 10 bid periods per year, not 12, so the Horizon numbers are probably about 17% less than what these charts might suggest.

At Colgan I rarely ever credit over block. There is nothing fancy about our "contract" and If you are not trying very hard to make extra you will see none.

An example is I am a lineholder:
I want as many days off as possible and I commute so do not ever bother calling me to ask me to pick up a trip (scheduling). Because of this I may block 75-80 hours per month.

Our trips are blocked pretty generously and when we have massive edct times (always) we are aware and typically will not board the plane and subject the pax to a 3 hour sit. Because of this I will get to the plane at noon for a noon 30 departure, have an edct of 4PM so we will board at 3:15, push off the gate at 3:45 and end up sitting for 30 or so minutes more depending on ATCs mood. We fly the flight and end up under block since the company anticipates the delay and the sit so no extra credit.

I deadhead maybe once every 4 months so that half credit is never there

I never ever EVER work on days off so the 3.45 credit is never there

repo credit only happens in ALB and it is 10 or 15 minutes and take 35 so I avoid that like the plague.

MX/WX canx although these are common here for some reason they never come my way.

Holidays, do not usually work them so no 3.45 there

Training (my favorite) I had ground m-f so I bid a line with a trip m-thur. They drop the trip for training (worth 22 hours) and do NOT give me the credit for it. They then pay me 10 hours credit for 5 days of training but since I lost the 22 hour trip I am under guarantee for the month so that month is shot.

Long story short, on average my block vs credit is almost always dead on with the exception of a couple rare hours (less than 5).

That is what a lack of contract can do. Express jet does not have this problem since with little effort many of my FO friends there will end up with MORE days off than they started with and 60 hours block and 85 hours credit all through witchcraft and trickery working the system and their great contract.

I typically credit 300 hours more than I block every year. I bid for trips that start or end with one flight of usually an hour or so thats paid at minimum daily gaurantee. Through in a a few standups, deadheads and cancellations, and it adds up pretty quick.

Well hopefully the Pinnacle negotiators can help these figures go up instead of down. For years we've been an ANCHOR to the entire airline profession as a whole.....sorry.

But - Bravo! to our pilot group for voting NO to a concessionary contract.

Airline pilots are professionals.....nothing short.

I didn't know that, do you mind explaining why?

Another thing also, I'd like to make a chart based on hourly rate/seating capacity... For example Air Wisconsin, 50 seats/$25 would be $0.50 per seat per hour etc instead of annual income based in min guarantee. I need your help. Some airplanes are obvious, but I don't have the seating capacity info on some regionals. Perhaps someone can point to a place I can find this, or you can tell me what airline you work, the various airplanes you operate and the seating capacity. I'll first make a comparison among regionals and then compare it to mainline pay. Thanks. If you prefer to PM that's also fine.

I'm not going to downplay how good XJT's CBA is,not in the least. Especially compared to what's out there at some other operators. Along with the fact that although we took an hourly concession that we're not getting back, our work rules didn't change.

But like I mentioned in the other thread, the previous employers CBA was way more lucrative on the W2.

2000 was an incomplete year, coupled with a newhire training, etc

2001 1390 credit hours, 754 in the logbook
2002 1360 credit, 684 in the book
2003 1168 cedit, 599 in the book
2004 1079 credit 524 in the book
2005 260 credit, ZERO flown, under that CBA.

Minimal, if any open time pickup for 2000-2002, NONE for 2003-2005. And I didn't even try that hard from a "working the contract" standpoint. Other guys I know were doing in the 1400-1600 hour range using the PFM of the CBA.

Sad how this career/profession has deteriorated, even at the "regional" level.

In other words while other pilots from your airline are eating gov't cheese you are cashing in your vacation and picking up open time. Marvelous!

Who cares? The airline pay is a joke and at the majors too. And 9 times out of 10 the pay is last on someones mind when they apply to the regionals. If it was, they wouldn't have become professional pilots in the first place.

I care. Tell me, what was on your mind when you applied to GoJet? Besides, pay is a slice of the pie when it comes to picking a regional, along with QOL, domicile, work rules and in some cases, integrity.

Sorry but the graph is a joke.

I made considerably more then that each year. And no I wasn't volunteering for open time. It appears the poster had an agenda.

I was goning to comment on that too... Everyone has their reasons for what they do, but picking up time on vacation is just bad karma...

lol, and what agenda might that be? what's so hard to read about hourly x min guarantee? It's a comparison of min guarantees. It's plain to see that per diem, open time, credit hours and working above guarantee are not included in the graph. You don't have to "volunteer for open time" to credit higher than 70-76 hours. There are many factors involved. I don't know who you work for but... Some companies who clearly have a smaller pilot to airplane ratio will probably work their pilot group a lot harder than other companies. Is it possible for someone who work at the lower end of that graph make more in one year than a Horizon pilot without picking up open time? Absolutely. It also all depends on how people bid, including people sitting on reserve. Some people bid reserve and bid last out so they never get called out, some people bid first out. Maybe in some airlines 3 years is enough to have enough seniority that you have a better choice of which line credits more in one month. I can tell you now that 3 years at GoJet or Compass vs 3 years at Eagle or Comair might be a difference of holding a line in the single digits or sitting reserve. That graph is pretty objective in my opinion. It just didn't involve other factors.

For starters there is the first gaping hole in the equation. Somebody probably already mentioned it but the graphs compare turboprop payscales to jet. Apples and Oranges that's all.

It's awesome you know what's going on at my airline; we've recalled everyone and are set to hire in the spring. So I don't have any qualms about picking up time, and I figured this time would pay for my online classes (I'm going back to school, after dropping out like a moron in college to go work at a flight instructing job in California, dumb, dumb, DUMB!!!).

And for working, since we have trip touching, and I'm dumb and didn't realize I had vacation, I couldn't get any more days off then 5 (long story, it all primary but since I took 6 months off, I lost a few days and it just snuck up on me).

Correct, it's a worst case scenario comparison. Also technically turboprop to jet is meaningless. Q400 vs ERJ135 for example... the Q should obviously pay more. I'm assuming you were implying turboprops should pay less. The next graph im trying to work on involves hourly vs seating capacity.