What CHQ pilots really think!

[shuttlepilot]

90k

Not to be a grinch, but the average income in the area I live, south central VA,
was a little over 27k per year. So 90k is still quit a bit of $ here.

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

While I'm not a fan of regional payscales, I have to ask.....90K is NOT a lot of money? What the hell kinda f*cked up budget do you have?

I can see that you have no wife, kids, or thought of how you will fund your retirement.

Childcare is pricey if your wife works....if she does not, you are it for the money. (Kind of hard to have both work and raise kids when you are gone for a week at a time.)

Cars are 25 k a pop now for a cheaper model.

Houses are 130 to 140k in a lower middle class neighborhood in the smaller cities (cookie cutter houses with 50 just like yours in the neighborhood), 200k in the bigger cities.

Nice houses will run you 300k with no problem right now, how about in ten years?

College in 18 to 20 years? 100k easy and that is for a city college.....flight school or doctor? 500k easy if it continues to rise as it is now.


A few things to think about when you see those 90k RJ's.

90k is not squat when you have a family and kids. Your average highschool grad worker bee family can pull 65k between construction jobs and retail store employment. Find a couple in your neighborhood that fits that bill and see how well they are living.

edit: not that living on 65 k or evn 90k is bad......but did you really go to all that training and 4 year degree and work your way up through this industry to just live like your average joe? If so you should have saved your money and gone to a community college for welding or plumbing or some other similar job.

 

[410dude]

More thoughts from CHQ pilots.
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flyrr100
Junior Member

Registered: Jun 2004
Domicile: MCO
Equipment:
Posts: 8
I'll bet the guys moaning about us killing the industry flying 190s are 23 year old academy grads who think the industry owes them everything. Wake up. You got into the industry using something that wasn't available five years ago. We all paid our dues flying night checks, flying 135 light twins, or flying for the military. That was after a few years flight instructing. I had 3500 hours when I was hired here and I was the lowest in my class. You flew a seminole for a few months and think you are owed a slot in a 757.
Don't get me wrong. I have no problem flying with low time Perdue or Delta Connection grads. You are all skilled and very professional. Just stop it with the 'I'm gonna be a 757 Captain before I'm old enough to rent a car' attitude. It's a new era after 9/11. If you have to get out, go to UPS or Fedex. Thats where you'll earn the big bucks. If you want to haul people, $90k flying a 190 is looking pretty good to me. Look at JetBlue's 190 rates. You really want to go there? And if I'm bringing the majors down, maybe it's a wake up call for them.
I don't post here much. But you guys need to wake up, and smell the coffee. You fly for a great airline. Ask anyone who was here pre BB.

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flyrr100
Junior Member

Registered: Jun 2004
Domicile: MCO
Equipment:
Posts: 8
What's wrong with wanting to make a cereer at a large regional carrier? I'd love to fly the 190. And I'll do it at our rates. I say again, look at Jet Blue. They are today's carrier. They have today's pay rates. The DC9 Captains you speak of are working on yesterday's rates. Why do you think US Airways and United are in bankrupcy? Why do you think Delta is on the brink? You have to wake up. We are in a new economy now. If we earned $100k flying here, Chautauqua wouldn't exist! We exist by giving our host carriers a good product at a good rate. If you don't belive this, look at Mesa. A lousey product but Delta are using them now. Because they are cheap.
You'll never earn the money that major carriers earn if you stay at Chautauqua. But for the guys looking for a career here, absolutely 190s belong at Chautauqua. If Delta or United want us to fly them, we should.
You have an education. You must know you are in the top 10% of the Nation's wage earners at Chautauqua. Try earning what you do here, and getting 18 days off a month, at Colgan, or even Mesa. Look at what you have instead of what you want.

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flyrr100
Junior Member

Registered: Jun 2004
Domicile: MCO
Equipment:
Posts: 8
One more thing. I care as much about a pilot at a major carrier as I care about a Wal-Mart greeter in Adilade Australia.
I'm a Chautauqua pilot. I care about my future. And 190s and even 777s should be in my future.
Why do you guys lose so much sleep worrying about the future of a US Airways pilot? After all, the chances you'll ever be a US Airways pilot, or even ever want to be a US Airways pilot are slim to none.

 

[miles otoole]

While I'm not a fan of regional payscales, I have to ask.....90K is NOT a lot of money? What the hell kinda f*cked up budget do you have?

No kidding-it's about double the median income in this country and about 50% MORE than the average family that has a house and pays for their kids college. And yep, new car too.

Let's see-90K or $60,000 net / 12 = $5,000 per month.

$2,000 for a mortgage
$500 for a car (all expenses)

That leaves $2,500 for the rest. Hard to imagine one couldn't have a high net worth after 20 years of this single income. Want to live like the millionare next door? Drive a previously owned car, have the spouse work (gosh forbid), don't buy a new boat, don't eat out every night, etc. Many Americans do it.

Funny thing is, go to the local Walmart and watch all of the $40K per year income families loading up the new Suburban (you know who they are.)
It seems the less someone makes, the more they feel entitled to buying new things.
I don't think regional pilots are entitled to fly the 190, but I do think they are entitled to much higher starting pay. Until the major airline pilots realize this and attempt to do something about it, the self serving attitudes will never disappear.

 

[surfnfly]

With the attitude that some of the people on this board have it won't suprise me to see the return of PFT by some CEO that can jingle the controls of a shinney new 170/190 for 70K. The attitude of well its the market and if I don't take it someone else will. There is something you can do refuse to fly them for crap wages don't let them on your property until pay rates are established. For all that say mainlines screwed up with RJ's. The public decided they did not want to fly in those prop puddle jumpers. The ones that screwed up were the regionals that first got RJ's. Everybody just wanted to fly a jet so they could go to a major sooner that they didn't really give a sh#t about rates because they would soon be moving on to bigger better jets. That IMOO was the start of the downfall of this once great profession. When I started out not that long ago my fisrt real flying job I earned a whopping 14,500 for an FO on a Metro but I was willing to pay my dues because airline Capts were making 300k+. Now we can be lucky to make half that. The threat of these bigger and bigger jets going to regionals is real and if the pilots that read these boards don't wake up this profession is doomed from the once great career it once was. But hey it's just all about me though right.

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

Let's see-90K or $60,000 net / 12 = $5,000 per month.

$2,000 for a mortgage
$500 for a car (all expenses)

That leaves $2,500 for the rest. Hard to imagine one couldn't have a high net worth after 20 years of this single income. Want to live like the millionare next door? Drive a previously owned car, have the spouse work (gosh forbid), don't buy a new boat, don't eat out every night, etc. Many Americans do it.

You left out a few things:

Second car for the spouse 500
Child care if the spouse works 250 minimum a month
High speed internet (required for most airline jobs anymore for bidding ect. $50
Power 100 average
food 500 month (Kids eat like horses...trust me on this one)
Car insurance $50 month and that is if you are getting it real cheap for both cars,


$3950 right there and that doesn't include 401k and IRA contributions (You don't actually expect to be able to retire on 401k alone do you?

Add college tuition in that and you are going in debt every month.

If you want to be an airline pilot and live like your average joe down the street, be my guest, But you should have saved yourself a lot of time and gone to high school only and become a Coke or Pepsi drink truck driver. They pull 40 to 45k second year or so and all they had to do was take a CDL written test.......What is your average Junior RJ Captian making these days after spending 5 to 7 years getting there? $50k...$55k? Seems like the return on the CDL is the better investment. Got a buddy that moved into managment doing the drink truck thing, he pulled 70k last year and only has 7 years with the company...which was his first job in the business. That 90k payscale, what was that.....12 year scale....or was it 20?

 

[Bdfg1]

Let's see-90K or $60,000 net / 12 = $5,000 per month.

$2,000 for a mortgage
$500 for a car (all expenses)
That leaves $2,500 for the rest. QUOTE]

Yep keep adding more fuel to prove our point.

 

[Nindiri]

See, this is the kind of stuff that makes us look bad to the public. Take an average teacher, for example, with a Masters degree making about 45K. He sees us whining that 90K and 15 days off a month is not enough, and he is not very impressed. You think he's going to give a crap when a judge refuses to release us to strike, or fines the union for too many sick calls?

Maybe you guys have more expensive tastes than me, but I get by just fine on 90K without hardship. And, of course, if my company gets bigger equipment with relatively bigger payrates, that's even better.

 

[210FR8DOG]

no kidding, our 4yr captain rate is $60 an hour or about 60k a yr. You can make about 90k in 15 yrs if you add check airman pay. In about 15 yrs that 90k will be worth, you guessed it kids, 60k, or less!! I'm still here because I'm too broke and stupid to do anything else!!!!!!! dammit!!

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

See, this is the kind of stuff that makes us look bad to the public. Take an average teacher, for example, with a Masters degree making about 45K. He sees us whining that 90K and 15 days off a month is not enough, and he is not very impressed. You think he's going to give a crap when a judge refuses to release us to strike, or fines the union for too many sick calls?

Maybe you guys have more expensive tastes than me, but I get by just fine on 90K without hardship. And, of course, if my company gets bigger equipment with relatively bigger payrates, that's even better.

He also is not the one in charge of 20 to 100 million worth of company equipment and responsible for 100's of lives on a daily basis.

How many times have you heard a teacher type ask you what it's like to be responsible for that many peoples well being every day? I hear it all the time, I normally respond with "If I get there in one piece so do they." But next time you hear it, consider who is asking you the question, Chances are it comes from some fairly well paid professionals.......They unconciously are telling you that they would not want to have that kind of responsibility.

Never be embarrassed about what you make, or what other people think about what you make outside of the aviation family, most of the people that you haul around everyday would not want that kind of responsibility.

 

[Nindiri]

I understand what you're saying and I'm definitely not ashamed of what I make. I'm just saying that relative to education and training, and the amount of work we do, we make better than most other people. 90K buys quite a bit, and we still have plenty of time left to do whatever we want. True, in 15 years inflation will have eaten into that, but long before then we will all be on new contracts. Again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't want more, just that we aren't being quite honest when we complain of being underpaid.

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

I understand what you're saying and I'm definitely not ashamed of what I make. I'm just saying that relative to education and training, and the amount of work we do, we make better than most other people. 90K buys quite a bit, and we still have plenty of time left to do whatever we want. True, in 15 years inflation will have eaten into that, but long before then we will all be on new contracts. Again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't want more, just that we aren't being quite honest when we complain of being underpaid.

True there are professions out there that equal or surpass ours in the amount of training that we receive, Doctors, Teachers etc.. But aside from the Doctoring profession there are very few professions that is as intolerant of mistakes as ours.

If an engineer make a mistake from a momentary lapse of judgement or inattention, he has many chances to correct the mistake before his building project gets to the stage where it could collapse and hurt someone.

We on the other hand do not have the luxury of having a lapse of judgment on short final and then take our time about correcting it. For the most part we must be correct all the time, physics and gravity do not normally allow much time to rectify a mistake.

If a teacher screws up, they go back and correct the test or whatever it was, the engineer goes back and corrects the calculation error for the load bearing beam, Pilots normally get placed inside several ziplocks along with their passengers if he screws up.

That is an important point to remember the next time some passenger, or more importantly some Airline CEO tells you that you are not worth a better than most payscale. Remember that 99% of the Airline CEO's out there doesn't even know how to start the airplanes that their company operates.....and he also is one that has time to correct any mistakes that he makes as well.

 

[miles otoole]

You left out a few things:

Second car for the spouse 500
Child care if the spouse works 250 minimum a month
High speed internet (required for most airline jobs anymore for bidding ect. $50
Power 100 average
food 500 month (Kids eat like horses...trust me on this one)
Car insurance $50 month and that is if you are getting it real cheap for both cars,



Add college tuition in that and you are going in debt every month.

Get a cheaper, used car.
Doesn't wifey poo have a job with her college education? If she's a kindergarten teacher, she should be seeing $40K min. Heck, at $90K you are getting close to not being eligible to even contribute to an IRA because you make too much.
Kids? Why are you having kids when you can't even afford to save for retirement or for their 8 years of education.
"But I'm a pilot. I am supposed to be living in the same neighborhoods as doctors."
Pay WILL NOT significantly increase in the future in this industry. You may not want to hear it, but the barriers to entry are the same as those for your Pepsi truck driver. If you WANT to retire comfortably, control what you are able to and quit wasting time on those things you cannot. Or don't. Either way, remember that each and every pilot in this industry will do what is in their OWN best interest.
As the senior pilots have shown time and time again that they will gladly throw the junior pilots in front of the truck full of hot tar if it's in their best interest alone, then the only way to protect yourself as a junior pilot is to grab what you can, when you can, as it ain't gonna be given back.
Start all newhire regional pilots at $40K a year and you'll see much less selfishness. Continue to start 'em at $20K and like someone on welfare, they get understandably become desperate. Question is, how do you realign pay so that a newhire regional FO makes at LEAST what a top major airline stewardess makes? Should they or should they not be compensated based on their level of responsibility ALPA? Anyone? I say give 'em some of Woerths salary.

 

[flyguy81]

who says you have to pay for your kids' education? noone paid for mine, i paid and am still paying for it

 

[miles otoole]

who says you have to pay for your kids' education? noone paid for mine, i paid and am still paying for it

Exactly-once they realize that they'll make squat as an airline pilot, they'll have to look into more lucrative careers to pay their school loans.