Like a buddy of mine, I guess I won't understand your trepidation to make more money. Why would you stick it out to "maybe" get to a major, when you can get from AAA to the Brewers to build the stats and put out feelers to the Yankees?

Yankees aren't going to draft everyone, but they sure look at big league experience when considering a candidate.

Those places aren't exactly easy to get hired from either. I'm sure Spirit and JetBlue have the same thousands of RJ guys applying.

Money isn't even on my list of things I'm looking for in an employer. I could easily live the rest of my life on the 40k a year I'm making now and be perfectly happy.

I will add though like someone else said it's not exactly easy to get hired at the airlines you mentioned. There is a significant amount of competition for national jobs.

This is an interesting point. At what age is it no longer financially advantageous to pursue a career at a major? Understanding this is a subjective question considering QOL, seniority, money earned over a given period, current status, etc. Just curious what the general masses have to say.
I think my cutoff is age 45 directly attributable to the quoted statement above.

ALPA said that if you had 7 years left it was financially advantageous under our old contract to flow to AA. That was looking at Eagle benefits and comparing them to AA's from a financial stand point only.

That seems like an awfully short period of time and I wonder how many pilots at the age of 58 would be willing to give up their QOL to move to a major. My guess is about 0 to 1%.

I'd agree with you and our flow acceptance backs up your thinking. That ALPA deal was only considering financial gain/loss over a period of time from flowing, nothing else.

Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that it was easy. In addition, not wanting to go to certain airlines isn't an indictment on you. However, playing the lottery is easier with many tickets rather than just one.

Good luck with your advancement.

Just looking purely at the pay scales, I would say somewhere around 53-55 should be the cutoff, unless for some reason, you are that old and don't have much QOL at Eagle.

Yes. You have to be able to make it to the top of the pay scale (IMHO) for the move to make sense.