I believe it's around 96K with a 10K signing bonus.

I've heard a few instructors will be starting ground school as a new hire pilot on 12/7 to get a seniority number and then returning to instruct until March

I hope this shortage of instructors and how the company is handling the holidays are the sign of things to come for the pilot group especially ours given our long upgrade times due to lack of variety of flying and no fleet diversity.

One could dream, right? :p

they are certainly feeling the pressure…

After the last 3 years of BS, we’re due a year or two without any garbage. Hopefully in ‘22 it’s not ourselves doing the damage by being unable to hire enough….

It does almost seem like someone in flight ops has realized that by going cheap in the short term, you are just hurting yourself long term. There is a difference between keeping costs low and paying your people what it takes to get them to show up and do a good job.

Part of the reason thanksgiving week went so well is because there were no major weather, tech, or other disruptions. The airline industry got extremely lucky that week. Had that happened, though, I think our recovery would have gone WAY better than it did in October. I think Christmas week will probably go fairly well, and it sounds like they are trying to unscrew the manning crisis at the schoolhouse. I have heard rumors of a new MOU for pilot instructors that is supposed to be a big improvement on the one that got voted down by the BOD.

I am hopeful, anyway. I will probably laugh at this post in a couple of months.

I'm hoping this may be a preview of the forthcoming Jordan Era. Our c-suite has been overweighted with bean-counters for the last 15 years, and it shows: fuel hedges (great, right up until they weren't); Redefining Excellence (aka massive Ground Ops cost-cutting); tech debt; stock buybacks; 5+ year labor negotiations, profits over people, 1221. I could go on...

BJ has a golden opportunity soon to mend a lot of fences that his predecessor wrecked. 2022 will be very telling.

I had training last weekend and the CPT was conducted by a MDW Captain and the MO was by a Check Airman. First time I’ve ever seen that.

Do you build any kind of seniority as an instructor? In other words if you hypothetically were able to become a line pilot a few years down the line would you start at year one pay and seniority?

yup. Difference cba’s, different job. Only thing you’d keep is your employee number and company seniority for things like profit sharing, etc.