I was faced with the same situation (colgan and awac), although I had a few more offers on the table as well, including freight.

I choose AWAC. I was lucky enough to get hired on at the 'right' time, and have almost 150 below me in less than a year. This is out of a total pilot group of less than 800.

With my senority I don't expect to make less than $44k my second year (even with the concessionairy contract; if we get our old contract back come November I'll be in the low $50's). A 'button pusher' maybe, but if you get the saab you'll be an fo for two years too. Do the worst case scenario there. Yikes.

Will Colgan continue to expand? They've done a lot in the past few years. It's sometimes hard to keep that momentum going.

Good luck - picking a company can be a crapshoot. I've had guys at Colgan PM me about coming to AWAC because their upgrade/lifestyle wasn't what they expected.


P.S. There was a Colgan SAAB captain in my newhire class. That being said, he's probably still at Colgan because he was asked to leave halfway thru training !

I fail to see how you will make $44k your second year.

$35/hr x 75 = $2625/month x 12 = $31500.

... but hey ... you were only 28% off, not too bad

You obviously don't understand how airline compensation works...and thats okay. You are only looking at guarantee numbers, and not considering any of the other "soft money" you get within the AWAC contract.

The average line is built to 83-87 hours of credit, some up to 95 hours of credit on 88ish hours of block time (as my line was this month). Throw in a weather delay here, a junior man there, PHL delays every day and you can easily credit over 100 hours per month while having blocked much less than that. If you pick up any premium pay flying, you stand to credit even more.

I worked 10 days in April, flying about 40 hours and credited 94 hours of pay.

My W2 for 2006 at AWAC (I was hired in early January) should be somewhere between 25-28K including perdiem.

Sorry, my mistake.... does Colgan have any of those sort of quirks in their contract ?

I should also add that Colgan has a junior base within 1 hour of my current residence; this is one of the big draws.

But hey, to each their own

No apologies needed...I didn't understand it myself until about a year ago!

IMO this is the deciding factor: your QOL will be immensely better if you don't commute.

Good luck!

It is almost impossible to commute at Colgan because the NE based crews spend almost all nights at home; i.e. not in a hotel.

wow dude you obviously have an inate understanding of how airline pilots are paid...sorry I tried to help. I won't make the mistake of doing it again.

later

ps i haven't credited <95 hours in a month after getting off reserve (even on reserve I had two months over 100 credit). That's $40k/yr right there @ second year pay, add in $5,000 in per diem (which colgan doesn't pay unless you do an overnight, which are rare, but you are still gone from home 14 hours a day...) and you get $44,900.

dont add per diem

why? what's your reasoning?

Do you live in base and/or pick up alot of opentime, or are you one of those lucky guys that always gets to sit for 2+ hours at a time on the ramp or taxiways in PHL?