Year 1 Pay
 

Why do first year pilots make so little compared to year two and beyond? It's not just one airline...it's seemingly all. I get the concept of longevity increases, but it seems first year pay is inordinately low compared to year two and later.

Just curious why?

Because we still show up for groundschool.

I think the original idea was that it offsets the high cost of training a new hire for the company. As RJSCUM said above though as long as people keep showing up for training it's not going to change. As soon as an airline can't get any new hires to show up one of the first things they do is offer signing bonuses to help first year pay.

Makes sense. Thanks for the replies.

The airline invests quite a bit on each new hire; the same can be said for any multitude of industries. Regionals and LCC's issue type ratings (SIC) at the completion of training which range between $8000 - $15,000.

Then why don't captain upgrades take a hit on their pay rates when they transition to the left seat, in order to cover training costs? First year pay rates are low because the UNION negotiates it that way. They use the savings to make gains elsewhere in the pay scales for more senior pilots.

Its pure greed on the parts of the pilots already on the seniority list (but dont take that as ugly). The unions simply dont negotiate for people that arent on the property.. as long as pilots are showing up to ground school.. contract negotiators put the money where the pilots are.. for example, there is no reason for Jet Blue to negotiate 18 year Captain rates just yet.. they dont have any pilots there.

The regionals are also one of the few sectors where FO pay is a much smaller fraction of Captain pay. Take a look at majors, legacy, charter or corporate jobs. FO's usually and should make 60% of what a Captain makes. A lot of first year regional Captain scales start at $65/hr so FO's should start at $39/hr. After a few years an $85/hr regional captain should be flying with a $51/hr FO.

Most majors start new-hires at very low pay as well, compared to year 2 pay. It's not just the regionals.

I didn't word what I wrote that great but I wasn't really talking about first year pay. I was going off on a tangent about the whole pay scale. The regional pay scale is different from most legacy, major, corporate scales in that FO's aren't anywhere near 60% of captain pay on the whole scale.