regional pay 10 years ago

[WrightAvia]

Why don't you talk to some of the Skyways guys that have been there for 10 years. They will tell you about how they had to sleep in the MKE terminal. The airport manager made Skyways get them pilots out of the terminal and into apartments or hotels like 20 to a room.

I'm not making this crap up.

 

[bobbysamd]

Skyway Airlines

Why don't you talk to some of the Skyways guys that have been there for 10 years. They will tell you about how they had to sleep in the MKE terminal. The airport manager made Skyways get them pilots out of the terminal and into apartments or hotels like 20 to a room.

I'm not making this crap up.

I believe you 100%. Take a look who owned Skyway back then.

Hint: The company that owned Skyway is discussed in this thread.

 

[BRA]

I really like reading these posts........it just seems the pay is going lower and lower by the month, and no sign of any higher pay in the future for me........(a first year FO.) Still isn't as bad as back then. They must have thought it was near a deadend back then too. 12K back then was ridiculus..and it's not like inflation over the past 10-15 years was that big of a difference. I question when my breaking point will be...and i decide that pay in the 20's per year is no longer doable, and i need to look at another career. It is downright embarrassing. I am proud of what i am doing. But you can't get your life moving on 20K a year, you just can't. I would love to hear any other comparisons between then and now. Did people back then think a job at the majors was 10 years away?

 

[enigma]

I was a MESA newhire in the fall of 1990, we started out at 5.6CENTS per mile, on lines that averaged 16000 miles a month. that's $10752 per year. No PFT and pretty good training. Except for the pay, I had no real complaints against Larry and Company. I worked four, 1/2 days a week and was home every night. If you did your job, and were based at an outstation, life was almost completely seperate from company hassle. When I left for a corporate job, I was a E120 FO making around 8 cents a mile. Not much of a jump, but Brasilia lines were sometimes up to 24000 miles a month. That's about 24K a year, and was about equal to 1900 Captains.

regards,
enigma

 

[BRA]

a couple more:
10-15 years ago...what times were people hired with for there first regional? Total and multi ect.. personal examples would be great

When the gulfwar was going on and the economy was bad..were the majors and regionals pilots asked for concessions?

What kind of furlough #'s existed back then at the various airlines?

i would love answers to these, thanks

 

[banned username 2]

a couple more:
10-15 years ago...what times were people hired with for there first regional? Total and multi ect.. personal examples would be great

When the gulfwar was going on and the economy was bad..were the majors and regionals pilots asked for concessions?

What kind of furlough #'s existed back then at the various airlines?

Typical MINIMUMS were 1500 TT / 300-500 Multi. Competitive times were closer to 2500 TT / 1000 Multi. These times were Beech 1900 F/O's.

There were many pilots out of work. Many majors had pilots on furlough and several airlines had gone under (Eastern, PanAm, etc.)

I think this downturn may be a bit worse than the early 90's. I personally think this one will last longer. Back in the early 90's there weren't RJ's picking up the majors flying. I think you will see the regionals expand further and the majors contract further. There will be a LOT of pilots making careers at the regional level (and at regional pay).

 

[bobbysamd]

Hiring quals

Typical MINIMUMS were 1500 TT / 300-500 Multi. Competitive times were closer to 2500 TT / 1000 Multi. These times were Beech 1900 F/O's.

There were many pilots out of work. Many majors had pilots on furlough and several airlines had gone under (Eastern, PanAm, etc.)

I think this downturn may be a bit worse than the early 90's. I personally think this one will last longer. Back in the early 90's there weren't RJ's picking up the majors flying. I think you will see the regionals expand further and the majors contract further. There will be a LOT of pilots making careers at the regional level (and at regional pay).

Ditto to every point Falcon Capt. made. Many commuters also asked for the ATP.

I experienced those times first-hand. I had primarily the quals you see at the left when I was looking for commuter (regional) jobs. I still tend to think along the lines of early '90s mins when I'm asked what is needed to get on with regionals these days. When I started reading this board two years ago, people were whining about needing 1000-200, or ever less multi, to get on with a regional. I thought they had it made. Compare it to twelve-thirteen years ago. Before that, commuter mins were something like 3000-1000.

 

[jbDC9]

oops!

I was a MESA newhire in the fall of 1990, we started out at 5.6CENTS per mile, on lines that averaged 16000 miles a month. that's $10752 per year. No PFT and pretty good training. Except for the pay, I had no real complaints against Larry and Company. I worked four, 1/2 days a week and was home every night. If you did your job, and were based at an outstation, life was almost completely seperate from company hassle.

Ya know, I never was very good at that math stuff.... you are correct, 5.6 cents or .056 dollars per mile. My bad. Either way it added up to a pretty crappy paycheck. I also tend to agree with the rest of your post, other than the pay I had a pretty good time there, not counting the 10 months based in Rock Springs... woof! The only good thing about that dump was Mike's Astro Lounge downtown. Being a senior FO in Durango was pretty sweet gig though. And I really hated the fact that they'd short staff the outstations and have us throw bags... I recall in Carlsbad, NM they had a pregnant agent working and she couldn't touch the bags; the FO and I had to load the bags, tidy up the cabin and load the pax while she stood around doing not much of anything... I know they can't have a full UAL sized ground crew in a small town, but to have a pregnant chick there, WTF?

 

[metrodriver]

Not much has changed over the last 10-15 years. Salaries have been adjusted for inflation. then you made 1000.- a month, now it's 1600.-. In 1990 you could buy a very nice car for 15000.-, now that same one will run you around 25000.-. A postage stamp was 24 cents, now they are 37. PFT is coming back slowly, and the app fees are already here. Not much has changed, and if you look at the size of equipment (from 19 seats to 50) maybe we have gone backwards, but on the other hand you have autopilots, fms, pretty good a/c and a few other gadgets to make life a little easier. No more hand flying for 8 hrs a day making 9 landings and putting in 15 hrs of duty

 

[I.P. Freley]

I dunno, Metrodriver, it seems to me that things have improved somewhat... We're not just keeping pace, we've actually outpaced the economy by a little

I just typed in "inflation" on my browser, and after cross-checking a few inflation calculators, it appears that the inflation rate between 1990 and 2003 is 40%, give or take a percentage point.

From what I've read on this thread, an "average" FO would have made something between 10 and 15K in the early 90's. I think it's fair to say that an "average" FO makes about 20-24 these days, which is a fairly significant jump. Throw in the 2nd/3rd/4th year FO's at some of the bigger companies that pay over 30 (some over 40, even), and that's a very big jump indeed. On the bottom end, that's a 100% increase.

Throw the Captains in the mix, and now we're looking at a few people having mentioned $25k. Adjust that upwards by 40%, and now you're at $35k. With the exception of first or second-year 19-seat captains, I don't think that anyone is making that little in the left seat at most regionals (why do I think that someone is now going to look into Mesa's new payscale and prove me wrong?).

I'm not saying that we're paid what we are "worth", but it looks like we are all better off than we would have been 10-15 years ago, even taking inflation into account... Though of course we are, for the most part, flying bigger equipment on average, so perhaps we haven't improved that much after all!

Here's a question... Did anyone pay per diem back in the olden days, errrr, about 15 years ago?