Majors and *************************s

[KeroseneSnorter]

Good posts Kero man. But the reality at many regionals, especially at G-Jets, is that you need only about 500 TT to get hired, many have less than 500. An expensive RAA/CAE type rating helps a great deal also: (get a $25K type and you're well qualified to fly a UNITED (Express) Jet!) G-Jets is hiring street captains at low time as well. My airline is hiring low time punks too. It get fun below 100' on approach, I'm a flight instructor again! )c; Finally, avg upgrade at Skywest, Chatauqua, Coex, Mesa, and many others hovers around 2-3 yrs or less, not 4-5. Maybe Comair, PSA, definitely Eagle, and others are 4-5 yrs or more, but the tutor tours are pretty short these days. Mine was three years at AWAC.

500 hours....ouch. No wonder the payscale is being killed. When I had 500 hours I still thought that 400 bucks a week was a load of money, course I was 19 at the time.

Guess that is the problem. I spoke with a young pilot the other day, he was all excited to be getting close to capt. and was talking about the big money (47k I believe it was, 38 or so after taxes) that he was going to be making and how he was going to be getting married soon and how when he upgraded that he was going to buy a corvette........I didn't have the heart to tell him that not only would the corvette alone eat him alive (Corvette is what now..35k? 50k or so after all the finance charges when all said and done) but if he was planning on a family and a house he could kiss that corvette goodbye.....unless he was planning to live in a box.

Average smallish house 1500 sq feet or so: $1000 a month 12k a year
Average car payment(nevermind the corvette) a Saturn will set ya back about 200 a month: $2400 a year
Add gas, electric, food, etc etc....

What you have is a 50 to 100k or more education doing a job that is gone from home 20 days a month making what a neighbor of mine makes with a high school education working at a medical warehouse home every night and all weekends and holidays off...with a retiement package.

I really have no idea where the companies keep getting these people to do the job for so little. I guess they still have the delusion that no matter how bad the payscale is driven down there will always be a major job for them after a few years.

Points of interest about current events-

1. Buddy with 20 years in at a major....after the bk raping (i.e. RJ influx/mainline swap) W2 pay last year....$82,000.....about what he made in 1987 as a second year F/O.

2. His retirement is wiped out....totally

3. Price of gas 2.70 a gallon at the cheap place in town

4. Gallon of milk 4 buck a gallon in places (kids go through this stuff almost as fast as my truck burns gas...believe me)

5. One (1) decent cut of steak (Not fancy...decent) 8 to 10 bucks.

My point in all this crap? The f/o wages are a complete joke at the regionals, the Captain wages are laughable at the regionals, and the payscales at the "new" majors with a few (1) exceptions is sad at best.

Final insult to injury? I made more flying left seat in a regional turboprop 10 years ago than many of the RJ captains now make flying DC-9 sized jets...........that is the truly pathetic part. If you really want to see how bad it has gotten, go find a guy that flew a 50 seat Turboprop in the early seventies(cv-580 or similar)...........Pay for my old man that did it was 40k a year in 1971 for a "regional" (before every tom dick and harry flew in everybody elses colors under contract).....about 120k or so now or more. (new Caddy that year was $7000, his house he bought that year cost 32k)

 

[Fallingbrick]

Great Post!