It will take 2-3 years to recover what you will lose going to Spirit. You'll likely get hired at a major in that timeframe, so I would just stay.

Can you expand on that? What does one have to lose going to spirit? Last I checked sky west starting pay was the same as spirit (pending the new skywest offer) and year two it double where as skywest is a $5 raise. Not to mention regionals are still parking planes and fos aren’t flying at many of the regionals due to saturation of the fo market and lack of senior pilots to fill crews.

Does spirit have that problem?

Spirit’s training pay puts a huge dent in that first year pay calculation (1700 pre tax). And I think SkyWest included something about a pay bump if you have 750hrs 121 time and want to upgrade or something; and all the new Captain rates offered at regionals are better than Spirit FO at any longevity.

Spirit is obviously a good choice since a person would get an Airbus type rating and a job at an airline they could make into a career should they choose. However, if money in the short term is the primaryconcern, this might not be the place to do it for the above mentioned reasons.

So after a hundred hours of flying jets for 121 you have a class slot at an airline that is going to merge into the fifth largest carrier, but your concern is it may not be worth it what with all the retention bonuses the regionals are throwing at the latest crop of AllATP zero to hero grads. While it may be fun to fly a bus, your inevitable march towards “mainline” could be hampered so you want me to convince you if it’s worthwhile to slum it out here for a couple years.

What a time to be alive!

Yes, we are parking planes and cutting our schedule because we can't staff. You get $1700/mo your first 3 months here, with no medical coverage. Year 2 captain at Skywest makes around the same as a year 2 FO here, and so on. The guy asking the question is in a financial crunch and has no long term aspirations to stay here, so he shouldn't come here. He should upgrade, get his PIC, and go to a major.

Psst… you are working for a major…


And which planes have we parked?

This is a ULCC.

From a union fastread:

Schedule reductions, parking A319s, and temporarily hiring foreign pilots by misusing the E-3 visa program are certainly not permanent solutions or any way to run a successful and profitable business long term.

Major airline is more than $1 billion in annual revenue, doesn’t matter if you do that with ultra low cost fares or all lie flat luxury seats.

And stating that those aren’t permanent solutions and the company actually parking planes are not the same thing.

So no 319s are parked?

I mean, I just flew a 319, so that’s one that isn’t