Newhire CAL Pilots

[FlyBoeingJets]

What are you in hock up to your ass? I have 3 kids (2 in diapers) 1 awesome wife, a house, a car, and food and it works out fine. I think you really are doing this for flame bait.

Oh well your myopic loss is someone else's gain...unless you in your late 40's or 50's I could understand...but 30's...no excuse...

Yeah and you are paying your dues again...just like every major hurdle in life

You want good candidates and you can't give them decent pay and health insurance???

That doesn't make sense.

You don't really want quality candidates, you want desperate folks with nowhere else to go.

Good luck finding (quality) folks to fill the classes after you run out of the beat up, desperate ones.

The dudes I know who interviewed at CAL during the last year either didn't accept the job or left ASAP.

CAL is a good place to start in your 20's or unmarried 30's. You know that is what the company wants.

 

[catIIIc]

I agree with pkober, first year pay sucks and not having insurance sucks even more, I felt like a second class citizen at the hospital or doctors office, but my wife has a great job as a contractor,(no benifits) and we can make it work. First year pay sucks at just about everywhere so you suck it up if it is where you want to be. If you can't make it work do not come here, there are plenty of people wanting to come so I don't think CAL will have trouble filling classes.

To echo what Patriot said, you can fly as much as you want , or as little as you want. This may change with PBS but the first line it built me was 88 hours, so I am experimenting with this mock bid to see if I can get a few more days off and fly a little less. We will see tomorrow if it works out.

Overall CAL is a great place to be, I only had to sit reserve for three months after IOE and that was in IAH, so movment is pretty good right now. Barring any mergers or WWIII, which by the way is starting, things should be pretty good.

Good luck to us all

 

[Jonny Sacko]

Barring any mergers or WWIII, which by the way is starting, things should be pretty good.

Good luck to us all

Let me just slide that in here quietly, nobody will notice. Dum da dum. Nothing to see here.

 

[catIIIc]

I know I wrote that and I hope the Middle East thing will settle down but it may get worse before it gets better

 

[GogglesPisano]

First year pay at any airline isn't "paying your dues". It's the senior guys writting a contract and then not caring about the newhires.


CLAMBAKE

Someone has seen the light.

First year pay at a major airline is still paying dues? What was I doing financing my own flight training after college, flight instructing, 135, slinging gear in a CRJ, adding type-ratings at a company with a horrendous bust-rate, and sleeping in crashpads all those years? Must have been making just a downpayment.

 

[SOVT]

What are you guys doing for the first year with Health Ins? I had to turn CAL down and head somewhere else. I looked hard for cheap Ins. but the pay at CAL the first year, 6 months of me funding the INS, 3 Kids, 1 crazy Wife, House, Car, and food it just didn't work....

What are you guys doing for the first year?

Thanks

I suppose that it's all a matter of perspective. I was hired by Piedmont (the original) which at the time had a five year "B" scale. It took me five years to reach the same pay scale that I will have as a second year CAL pilot. So, the first year pay at CAL isn't such a big deal to me.

As far as getting thru the first year,it was tough. I'm 52 with a big house (paid for) lots of land (also paid for) that’s the good part. The bad - five digit property taxes, wife & three young kids two old vehicles that need repairing on a regular basis. You mentioned food, my 14 year old is a human eating machine. How did we do it. First, we went into this with zero debt. Second, we opened a line of credit on the house for emergencies. Third we set up a monthly maturity schedule from our savings, a $1000 cd maturing each month. Fourth, until now we never had a family budget, we do now. Prior to buying anything that could be considered a non-necessity, we waited 24 hours prior to buying. As far As the health insurance is concerned, CAL makes available a low cost high deductible plan. I did not take advantage of this however. The state I live in has a great plan for women and children, about $75 a month. I am covered by the VA because of service connected issues.

The toughest part of the first year is not blowing the budget on all the great food and drink that Europe has to offer. As a lineholder on the 756 after six months, life is good. So, I suppose the decision not to consider CAL is a personal one, but having been around the business for a lot of years, you need to remember that the first year will go by in a blink of an eye.

 

[seahorse]

The first year pay at CAL is completely unacceptable. Making $25K and also having to pay for your own health insurance is a slap in the face.

I don't want to hear any shiit from other posters on here about "paying dues." I have literally bled through all my cash, and I don't think there are any first year CAL pilots who aren't living negative, unless they are living in a cardboard box.

I don't think the first year pay has changed for over 10 years. Meanwhile inflation and everything else has gone way up.

The ironic thing is that most of the senior guys don't seem to care. They don't really give a shiit at all. This is probably what concerns me even more. In fact, I can't even remember any of them buying a round on the overnights. Not that I expect them to, but I sure as Helll did many times where I used to work.

Like one of the other posters said, you are treated like a baby the first year, with each Captain you fly with having to fill out a "probationary report" on you and turning it in to the Chief Pilot (no joke).

There are also some very substandard work rules in the contract. I'm talking about work rules that you wouldn't even see at a commuter airline.

Hopefully there will be positive changes in 2008.

 

[MECH]

The first year rate has changed in the last ten years. We took a 9% pay cut along with Contract 02. I have Captains try to tell me how tough it was when they started 30 years ago at 15,000 to 20,000 a year. You just have to smile and grit your teeth. So look to left and thank the captain next to you, for allowing the profession to sink a little lower!

 

[densoo]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TLrBqy4Kh9Y&search=things%20have%20changed%20dylan

 

[freeflyer14]

No one really ever mentions CLE... is it junior or senior, just curious.