Health insurance for a family will run you about 600 per month, and the rate has recently gone up so I've heard. This compares with about 150 to 250 per month for the other FDX Feeders. Maybe one of the reasons so many pilots are leaving as of late. If you're single and young then not such a big deal.
MX is good. Pilots are great. Management...I'll leave one that to someone else.
No paid per deim while flying a regular run- only as a floater, and then only when away from home >12hrs or so. Contrast that WestAir: they pay a per diem regardless of whether you're on a regular run or not. I think it's about $27 dollars/day or an extra $500/mo (non-taxable) on top of your base salary. Also, extra pay for MX repos, ect. Of course, California isn't a cheap place to live. Their mgmt is pretty cool in that they will go around to the different hubs occassionally hold 'town-hall' style meetings with the pilots, seeking input from the pilots, as well as pilots from mgmt- all pretty laid back. Also, mgmt goes to the hubs to take it's pilots out to Christmas dinner at one of the better restaurants. Okay, that's WestAir. Corporate Air, which operates Feeders in the mountainous western US gives their pilots a healthy dose of days off. I believe it's a hard week off every four or five weeks. Not sure about extra pay and bennies. The Empire guys can have good schedules depending on the manning available at the hubs. Each hub has it's Caravan supervisor, who recieves input from other pilots. MAC is more of a top down, chain-of-command culture with none of the monetary/lifestyle perks mentioned above. Unless you include TCA days. MAC has this 'time credit award' system where you might get a few days off per year. I'm not sure how the formula is set up, but it is primarily for the floater pilots. At one time, pre-2001, the floater pilots had a hard week off per month, but for some reason it was taken away. The 121 captains (not FOs or Caravan pilots) DO recieve a hard week off per month.
If you want to move an ATR, the GOOD news is that MAC has (in the past) allowed you to keep your Caravan pay whilst moving to the right seat. Which is decent of them. However, as of late, they have done alot of ATR hiring off the street, leaving some Caravan guys really bummed out as they've been passed over.
But, if you're just wanting to get some quality IFR and turbine time, MAC would be much better than some of the other, non-Fedex operations- like a certain one in Dallas that does UPS contracts.
Just my 2 cents.
