Quote:
Originally Posted by Cujo665
Kalitta, Omni and a few others have certainly become viable careers in their own right.
It’s interesting that you complain about lagging 10%-20% behind the industry while listing Frontier as competitive pilot pay. Go on their threads, they’re complaining about the last TA being, yep you guesssed it 10%-20% less than Spirit and much less than Jetblue.
Look, there are lots of folks who don’t think a schedule of 4 on 3 off, fighting for a jumpseat to and from a crashpad is an improvement from positive space and guaranteed hotels. You have Kalitta senior CA’s making over $300k and several over $500k. Senior Omni CA’s are doing over $300k as well.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both career paths. If you don’t like where you’re at, leave. I’ll add one thing... ask some of your coworkers who came from regionals where they truly got crap pay and were abused daily how they like working at your company.... see, it’s all relative, and the grass is always greener. For me, I made more as a first year FO at Omni than I ever made as a regional CA. No crashpads, no commuting headaches, lots of time off in big enough chunks to actually take the family on vacations several times a year. Best kept secret in aviation in my opinion.
The other carriers will catch up in CBA aspects as the pilot shortage worsens and they can’t staff. They’ll either pay appropriately or close from all the cancelled flights.
Problem with ACMI is stability; contracts bounce around and sometimes dry up, just like regionals. It is easy to do a look back and say if you were hired at Polar, Atlas, K4, or Omni in the early 2000s this career has been a decent success, but they are the exceptions, not the rule in ACMI. Meanwhile, guys who were hired at World (which definitely had a leading CBA in it's heyday), Gemini, RyanAir, ChampionAir, KittyHawk, Centurion, ATA, Airborne, Yellow Air Cargo, etc. have probably had to start over 2-3 times. It's like if you were lucky enough to buy 5,000 shares of AAPL in 2003 and have held since then, its easy to love and brag about the stock market to someone that has broken even.
Also to be fair Omni only got a good contract in the last year or so, and K4 two years before them, it has hardly been smooth sailing for them. It wasn't long ago, I bumped into an Omni FO considering quitting the industry because he was making 65k as 777 FO and was just "tired of it." Atlas is a mess now, but may turn out to be the beez-knees when they get a new CBA over there. This isn't a diss either, its just the facts as they stand. Everyone is high on the hog because the industry is booming, but it won't last forever, the retirements peak in a few more years and at some point there will be a recession again. It may it actually be a rocky road to be at the highest paid ACMI when that happens. I agree 100% that home-basing is awesome, but I'd pick up and move my family for a certain airline based in ATL for an extra 1-2 million in career earnings. Legacy all the way.
Good luck.
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