Hey everybody. Well, Now that I am a lineholder at my wonderful regional airline, I'm still broke. I'm seriously thinking of getting another job to help suplement my income. I thought about food stamps, but surprisingly I make too much to qualify!?!
I know I'm not alone in my poverty, but have any of you gone the 2nd job route? Wondering what types of work you were doing and how accomodating they were to the airline pilot's schedule.
Thanks
This probably won't help much.....
Saw an article in last week's Orlando Senile where a pilot's second job (or first!?) is extracting venom from poisonous snakes. He's only been bitten about six times. Money must be good.
That is what I did. I get chewed out every time I meet a furloughed major pilot. They all say "But, you need 121 time." Then in the next breath they'll curse Mesa, Chataqua or some other regional for flying CRJ's for too little money. Personally, I'm not going back to making 17-24K a year and sitting reserve in MEM.
As for second jobs. I worked at a grociery store as an overnight clerk. I stocked shelves. The worked sucked, but the pay was more than my flying job. They let me call in anytime I needed too and wouldn't fire me because they couldn't keep good workers. However, I ended up on several occasions walking into my getto apartment at 6:00 am to a ringing phone with scheduling telling me to go fly all day. I had several stretches where I was up for 48 hours or more, and a lot of that time was flying. It was dangerous and stupid and if my passengers had known they wouldn't have flown.
But, I had to do what I had to do. The last furlough was a wake up call. I went and got a real job and I may be upgraded to captain before the end of my first year here. I won't go back to a regional unless I can get 30K a year to start. There is absolutely no reason a pilot flying a 50 seat jet or even a 19 seat turbo prop shouldn't make 30K a year. Anything less just isn't worth it.
I just want to clarify things for you. I recently left my cargo gig where I was flying twin-piston. I hit the glass ceiling there around 38K/yr. I left that to built turbine time and this is where I found the opportunity to gain that experience. I'm now on track to make 1/2 of my previous salary this year.
Unfortunately my income just covers my fixed expenses and am just looking for a way to get a bit more 'ching for the fun things in life that I cant afford right now. After all I only work 15 days a month
I whole-heartedly agree that regional pilots need to stand firm and say no to concessions, ect. Right now our company has a TA out that we're voting on. The big change is pay cuts. I'm proud to say that as a pilot group we are telling our management to go Fcuk themselves. I'm not a pilot-whore now, nor will I ever be. Like I said earlier, just want some more discressionary income.
I don't know how you guys make it at 16 to 18K a year. I pull in about 40K a year as a lowly bottom feeder turbine capt in freight flying and my wife does about 25K a year (both of those wages are before taxes) and we still have a hard time living large. We both drive newer cars (neither is considered a luxury car), so we have car payments. Rent is about 560 a month, utilities aren't bad for the apartment...but we still have to live on a budget and we don't have kids.
In fact, I don't know how anybody in a profession can live on less than what we make and be happy. We both have to pay in to health care insurance...amounts to about 80 bucks a month total. I got a cargo pilot co-worker that has three kids and he pays in THOUSANDS on the health care plan we got. He A and P wrenches during the day AND CFI's at an FBO where he is out based at, moonlighting to make ends meet. He is probably pulling in better than 40K a year at the full time freight job. But then again, his wife doesn't work. (don't take that the wrong way, his wife is a full time homemaker with three kids...THAT'S WORK!!!)
I'm so tired of breaking my noogin trying to figure out how I could make ends meet as a regional FO. When people are getting paid less to fly airplanes than to drive buses or trucks, it's a sign of how screwed up things are. Maybe busdrivers got paid better 20 years ago too, but at least then we had a decent chance of making it to a major someday. Anyone who goes into the business now thinking they're going suck it up because "I'll fly be flying a 767 in a few years" better hope they don't get drug tested anytime soon.
We need some kind of pilot union or organization that crosses all regional/commuter lines and says nobody goes to work until all 121 FOs are guaranteed a living wage, say, 35k starting salary. Even that sucks, but you could probably stick it out for a year or two if you have kids and a mortage, like me.
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