Declining Glories: The Airline Career

[jonjuan]

You all make it sound like if you get out of aviation.....WHAM! You will be making 200K. It's amusing. I know people that make more money than I do and I know people that make less. The majority of the people I know that make more either work their a$$ off or do things that would make me want to shoot myself. In any case, to each his own.

Bingo. The averge person with an MBA will top out at $125k a year and more than likely will hate their job. What percentage of major airline pilots quit their job to do something else? I guarantee the percentage is miniscule as compared to a professional in any other industry.

 

[jonjuan]

The CEO of Home Depot just got fired for doing a bad job . . . and he got $200 million dollars severance. Corporate greed has run amock in this United States, aided by their friends in the Democratic and Republican Parties. Just look at the huge payouts that the elite managers at American Airlines are opening their bank personal vaults wide to receive.

If CEOs didn't make obscene amounts of money and made more like $500,000, WN, FDX, DAL, UPS pilots wouldn't be making 1/2 of what they do.

 

[VABB]

The avaerge person with an MBA will top out at $125k a year and more than likely will hate their job. What percentage of major airline pilots quit their job to do something else? I guarantee the percentage is miniscule as compared to a professional in any other industry.

In most other professions, one is usually able to change jobs/careers while not sacrificing much, if any of their current income in the process. Also, there may be a high number of careers/positions availabe for someone with a particular degree. i.e., a person with a CPA isn't relegated to only doing taxes for the rest of their careers.

On the other hand, most pilots don't have many skills outside of the cockpit that can be utilized in a different, but lucrative career. Some do, but most do not. There are many doctors, lawyers, CPA's, etc. who fly as a hobby and could enter the profession, but you find very few pilots who practice medicine, law, or accounting on the weekends.

In other words, the reason a lot of us don't just pick up and leave flying is because most of us are "stuck" in it and don't have much of a choice. I also very much agree that many of the office drones with MBA's and good salaries dislike their jobs as well. I think it goes without saying that most of those folks are just in it for the money and view their jobs as just jobs.

 

[Black Hawk]

The pilot profession is a top down structure. It is not the bottom and those entering the business that have ruined it. The bottom can not be controlled. The top can. ALPA has no control over pay for train, requirements of types of get the job, or non-union companies.

What ALPA does have control over is NWA, DAL, US Air, CAL, UAUA, Pinnacle, XJT, Mesaba, MESA, Air Wisky, Alaska, and the others who should be commanding the standards. The profession's standards are not determined from the bottom but the top of these ALPA controlled companies.

ALPA, under REZ, failed to hold the line, and make the sacrifices needed. If one or two of those companies needed to fail to keep the standards at the others so be it. Instead ALPA aligned everyone with the lowest common denominator. We will see if the new ALPA leaders make the tough decisions needed.

Leadershiop from the top is the only hope. ALPA is top down organization. There will always be a bottom but its the top standards that define the direction of the profession.

Good post! It's about time someone got it right here.

 

[jonjuan]

I interpreted your original post, below, as stating that pilots are high pay. You will have a hard time convincing others that you meant otherwise.




I may like flying airplanes, but I'm sick and tired of people accepting lower wages just because it's a job that they enjoy. There are plenty of professions where people enjoy their jobs. I enjoy my current job. It doesn't mean that I'm going to whore myself out for low wages just because I enjoy the job. That is scablike behavior.

Uh uh, and when you were flying that KC135 around as the PIC, you were making what, $75K? You did this in the military becasue it was a job that you enjoyed, no doubt, yet you took it in part knowing that it was a means to an end and this low paying experience was invaluable in getting the ultimately higher paying career. How is this any different?

 

[VABB]

I may like flying airplanes, but I'm sick and tired of people accepting lower wages just because it's a job that they enjoy. There are plenty of professions where people enjoy their jobs. I enjoy my current job. It doesn't mean that I'm going to whore myself out for low wages just because I enjoy the job. That is scablike behavior.

I think the IRS refers to that as a hobby. Good post Andy.

 

[FlyinScotsman]

Huh

If CEOs didn't make obscene amounts of money and made more like $500,000, WN, FDX, DAL, UPS pilots wouldn't be making 1/2 of what they do.

I am not sure what you are trying to say. Is it.... that we need CEO's making obscene amounts of money to run said companies? That is the only way of attracting the best and brightest. Or does it justify the pay of the pilots....because my CEO makes 2,000,000 a year and I being the super sharp captain that I am must be worth a quarter of that? I am not sure I follow your logic

 

[ferlo]

..............

 

[jonjuan]

I am not sure what you are trying to say. Is it.... that we need CEO's making obscene amounts of money to run said companies? That is the only way of attracting the best and brightest. Or does it justify the pay of the pilots....because my CEO makes 2,000,000 a year and I being the super sharp captain that I am must be worth a quarter of that? I am not sure I follow your logic

Nope, just simple supply and demand economics in a capitalistic society. You don't have an environment in which management can make a ton of money, you don't have an environment in which labor can make decent money.

 

[clr4theapch]

Its the same thing in the dispatch community, in fact its worse....we are stuck in an office....the pay rates have fallin off the edge of the world....there are less than 2500 dispatchers working for part 121 airlines, only the top 5% earn over $60K....most of them have taken hugh cuts.....the regional airlines are a joke anymore...My son recently got his dispatch license and was offered several interviews..According to him Skywest and ASA pays the very best at $14.92,hr to start...he was offered an interview with Mesa as well, they pay a whopping $10.89 an hour...how in the heck can anyone even live on that these days, needless to say he has not accepted any work as of yet, he is furthing his education with an MBA and other industry in mind....I have been dispatching over 10 years, and have taken cuts, I saw the writting on the wall in 2000 and I have been looking ahead to get out of the business by going in to other business ownership ....I will miss aviation...but as the original poster stated, the glory, the fantasy and love of the airlines has been gone for a long time....we are all just now realizing it.....I for one hope to be out this year.... rent a 182 once in awhile to scratch the aviation itch.