Air Canada RJ Payscales!!

[T-REX]

http://www.airlinepilotpay.com/aircanada/aircanada.htm


Saw the payscales posted for Air Canada and was shocked! 43K 1st yr. f/o and 114K for 3rd yr Captain!!! This is from an airline that operates both RJs and Widebody jets....anyone have any ideas how to get these rates down in the states?

 

[T-REX]

Correction: Numbers in canadian dollars which equals +/- 35K for FO and 92K for Capt. Still not too shabby.

 

[Fallingbrick]

Those rates were in Canadian dollars. It works out to about 34K USD for a first year FO. Maybe Air Canada doesn’t consider the EMB175/190 as an RJ. Or maybe there are fewer pilots up there who are willing to fly it for $19.00 per hour. Air Canada Jazz is a more reasonable comparison to US regionals as they fly the CRJ-200 and the DH-8. First and second year pay in both is 27K and 32K USD respectively. This does not include per diem. Makes you wonder how they managed to get livable wages.

 

[Capt. Caucasian]

Makes you wonder how they managed to get livable wages.

Its called Socialism.

 

[psysicx]

How hard is it to get on with Air Canada.I thought they furloughed?

 

[labbats]

After Canadian taxes, isn't that like $500?

 

[Vik]

Check out regional payscales in other countries like Japan, the middle east, etc. They're a lot better than U.S. as well.

 

[Rottweiller]

How hard is it to get on with Air Canada.I thought they furloughed?

Yes they have got pilots on the streets. When they were hiring, unless you had a relative as a pilot it was almost impossible to get on with them.

Those rates were in Canadian dollars. It works out to about 34K USD for a first year FO. Maybe Air Canada doesn’t consider the EMB175/190 as an RJ. Or maybe there are fewer pilots up there who are willing to fly it for $19.00 per hour. Air Canada Jazz is a more reasonable comparison to US regionals as they fly the CRJ-200 and the DH-8. First and second year pay in both is 27K and 32K USD respectively. This does not include per diem. Makes you wonder how they managed to get livable wages.

With their tax situation in Canada you can safely bet that after federal, provincial taxes you are going to loose about 40-48% of those amounts then there's the sales taxes - 15% in Ontario alone!! Gas taxes, property taxes, basically any tax in Canada are higher than the US.

 

[amcnd]

Tust me the 43K they pay you as a FO in the CRJ at Air Canada Living in YVR is like trying to live in NYC on 19K USD. And the time to upgrade is very long.

 

[pilotboy76]

Its called Socialism.

Ha Ha!! Well said!

 

[T-REX]

Maybe Air Canada doesn’t consider the EMB175/190 as an RJ.
-Fallingbrick


A 70+ seat jet not a regional aircraft? What a concept!

 

[Trash8Mofo]

Check out regional payscales in other countries like Japan, the middle east, etc. They're a lot better than U.S. as well.

Its call over supply of pilots. There are countless amount of P91/P141 flight schools in the US, people thinking that a high school grad can command a $150K job being an airline pilot, and those with $30K to spend and no job entrance barriers. Result is pilots stepping on each other for a $20K job for a promise that rarely becomes mature nowadays. Why do nurses' salaries gone up sharply in the last few years? Undersupply. Try open some mom & pops nursing schools around the hospitals, and see what'd happen to their pay.

 

[smellthejeta]

Its call over supply of pilots. There are countless amount of P91/P141 flight schools in the US, people thinking that a high school grad can command a $150K job being an airline pilot, and those with $30K to spend and no job entrance barriers. Result is pilots stepping on each other for a $20K job for a promise that rarely becomes mature nowadays. Why do nurses' salaries gone up sharply in the last few years? Undersupply. Try open some mom & pops nursing schools around the hospitals, and see what'd happen to their pay.

I'm *not* adding this for flame bait, as I truly believe this:

I really believe that the more successfull programs like GIA and whatnot become, the more likely they are to become a defacto hiring requirement. People should get a clue and put a stop to that while they still can. Back in ACA's more successful days, they were "advertising" 200 hrs Part 121 time as a hiring requirement. Whether or not they really stuck with that, I don't know. Point is, if you were fresh out of CFI school and needed that 200 hrs Part 121 time, what could you do? Go to a sh!tty regional, get the time and hope to get hired, or take a "shortcut" and fork over a whopping $30k to buy your 121 time. PFT at the regionals went away only because they were growing so fast they couldn't hire enough people with deep pockets. Sooner or later, the RJ vs mainline debate will finally find its balance point, and the regionals may go back to PFT.

Here's another reason I forsee that: With the major carriers all just about on their deathbeds and the premium fares just about out the window, most carriers will be forced to do it "WN Style." I'm not talking about the product or quality of product, I'm talking about high-frequency, high-volume routes. The regionals will no longer have their fee-per-departure gravy train, and will have to figure out how to make money on their own. Any town within a two hour drive of a major city will lose any regional feed, and those farther out will just have to suck it up and drive or go back to the old EAS days. Something tells me that a combination of PFT and EAS is the only thing that will get airline service to the parts of the country that aren't located within a reasonable drive of a large city.

 

[lymanm]

...

Air Canada was one of the earliest operators of the RJ, and at the time, only mainline carriers operated jets, or at least that was the prevailing mentality (the exception being a handful of BAe 146s). Therefore, since 1995 or so, the RJs have always been flown by Air Canada pilots, so the payscale is quite a bit higher than your typical contemporary regional. You basically had mainline pilots/wages flying regional jets.

However, when AC bought Canadian Airlines in 2000, it also amalgamated both carriers' regionals into one huge entity, Air Canada Jazz. It was around this time that Jazz also recieved their first RJs (from Midway I believe), at payscale closer to what other regionals offer. So for the past few years, RJs flown by mainline pilots were flying side by side with RJs flown by regional pilot. As Air Canada deploys much of their RJ fleet to American destinations, they found having RJs flown by mainline pilots competeing against US regionals flown by regional pilots was not good for business.

So, the plan now is to transfer all the RJs to Jazz. Jazz has also ordered the RJ-705 (the RJ-900 bascially certified for RJ-700 seating) to repace those older BAe 146s. Air Canada however, has ordered the EMB 190/175 for its mainline fleet. So Jazz will fly all the Bombardier jets, AC all the Embraers. I'm not sure if the payscale for the RJ-705 at Jazz is similar to the EMB 190/175 at AC mainline, as they are almost identical in capacity.

Simple, eh?