You are right about what own occupation is. However most airline LTD policies ARE own occupation. We were one of the few that were not prior to contract 2018. Now, what income offsets the benefit and many other details are what vary widely.

Heck even XJT had own occupation with no offsets for outside income. You could be a full time instructor at flight safety and still get your 60% of an 80hr guarantee.

I don’t know if delta has outside income offsets but they get their full 401k DC while on LTD and not based on their LTD income but their normal guarantee.

Not getting healthcare after five years, and income offsets, and no retirement are things we need to address.

Yeah, most airlines are NOT own occupation. Outside of the Big 4,5,or 6 (whatever the grouping of the week is) it’s not as prevalent as you like to make it seem it is. Read Frontier’s LTD language to start.

You want big things like no income offsets, medical lasting past 5 years, and retirement contributions? You better get more than 40 pilots to show up and participate next go around. If this group wants a big boy contract, they will need to put more effort in.

The definition for true own-occupation found here is more in line with what I thought you all got in the contract. It sounds like you got what the link calls "Transitional" own-occupation.

But hey, it's better than my regional :p

^this!!!! Makes me laugh when discussing with other pilots what we “missed” out on with our contract.. yet they vaguely remember exactly how far behind we were at the time. They also vaguely remember how apathetic this pilot group is and how poor participation was! Funny that everyone wants to voice their opinion of how the union “screwed us” with this contract... but when I bring up “hey we had 40 guys out of 300 in a base show up to picket!” They quickly close their mouths... oh yeah, 10 AA pilots came to that picket!

Let’s hope next time around we’re more engaged and we make gains where needed!

Left the RJ life at the 200k per year mark (lots of open time work) to come to Spirit. Year one will yield approximately 42-45k. I planned for this and I could not be happier with my decision. I actually enjoy days off and getting rid of any trip I need to get rid of; and I do mean any.

Amen brother!! Same story for me. Love being home and love going to work. It’s great!

That’s a benefit of seniority that you get any day off you want, not a “perk” of working for spirit.



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I didn’t think dropping trips was relative to seniority? I understand your point about getting days off with PBS bidding but I think he’s talking about dropping. I’m not on property yet so I’m more asking...

It all depends on the grid.

Just wondering what regional you made $200k at. At 14yr pay at one of the higher paying regionals, my best year was just north of $120k. That was an average of 84hr months with 15k in vacation buybacks that they offered during that year. I understand you said open time but there are only so many days in the month and I was working most of them.