Skiles and Age 65+

Is getting hired in your mid-late 20s behind the curve when it comes to being at a Legacy? I’m feeling behind
You can retire right now. Just walk up from the basement.






J/k
Do you think getting hired at a Legacy before 30 is falling behind? Will someone hired at DL, UA, AA have long enough to get senior to have nice trips?
 
Having actually lived in SoDak, the people were very nice and the cost of living was minimal. The Rapid City area is beautiful. Yes, it was cold and windy, but, overall, it was much nicer than the Twin Cities.

To this day, the SoDak DMV was the only one I've walked into (actually up to, since it was just a desk in City Hall) and had them say "Hi! How can we help you today?" No line, either.
 
Is getting hired in your mid-late 20s behind the curve when it comes to being at a Legacy? I’m feeling behind

Do you think getting hired at a Legacy before 30 is falling behind? Will someone hired at DL, UA, AA have long enough to get senior to have nice trips?
It depends. We know you aren’t at UA, so to answer your question we need to know if you are at DL or AA?
 
Why does it matter? Aren’t the seniority progressions similar enough at all the carriers? I know that AA has more retirements

Sure it matters!

"Will someone hired at DL, UA, AA have long enough to get senior to have nice trips?"

If you work for one of those, you already know you're able to look up seniority progression. You can see an estimated seniority number or at least work one out using attrition and compare that to what that seniority number can fly and hold today. As an example, I can see I can hold wide body Captain my last couple years at my shop but I'd be on reserve. I can also see that I could be over 50% in base as a narrow body Captain for the last 15 years I'm there (assuming no fleet changes, black swans, etc). I can see at what seniority level "nice trips" can be had.

So if you are at DL or AA, why can't you just look up that information?
 
Having actually lived in SoDak, the people were very nice and the cost of living was minimal. The Rapid City area is beautiful. Yes, it was cold and windy, but, overall, it was much nicer than the Twin Cities.

To this day, the SoDak DMV was the only one I've walked into (actually up to, since it was just a desk in City Hall) and had them say "Hi! How can we help you today?" No line, either.
There’s a reason there wasn’t a line ;)
 
You make that sound like a bad thing.

Though I will admit that in retrospect, it seemed like the world after the snap when I moved there.
Stumbling upon a deserted scenic anchorage or admiring the beauty from an empty mountain top or outlook should be celebrated. Finding no one else willing to get a driver's license in a flyover state, well to each their own :)
 
Corporate? Want to hustle somebody elses bags/skis/clubs?
Want to roll up a magazine to try and shove a dookie down the toilet because there’s nobody else to do it for you in Umptesquat, Manitoba?
Want to spend all day on Google translate negotiating with the generalissimo of some Central American airport for hangar space or an armed guard?
Want to vacuum ground Cheerios and clean up …uh… (what is that stain) after a long day flying because they trashed the jet?
Want to be tapped on the shoulder during an ILS to minimums because the coffee pot isn’t working?
Want to spend all day in Teterboro waiting with the APU running because they SAID they’ll be ready to leave at 10am but they ACTUALLY roll in around 4pm.
Want to spend your free time doing expense reports and justifying hotel, rental car, meal expenses?

Airline flying is 99% flying and 1%BS. Corporate flying was 99%BS and 1% flying.
Its like being on reserve your whole career with no work rules.
Its like flying with the least standardized pilots at your airline EVERY DAY.

SO…nope. Do not recommend. It’ll be a dark day before I ever consider any kind of business jet flying ever again.

No, I do not.
 
Stumbling upon a deserted scenic anchorage or admiring the beauty from an empty mountain top or outlook should be celebrated. Finding no one else willing to get a driver's license in a flyover state, well to each their own :)

Meh. Not dog person. Don’t feel the overriding need to interact socially all the time. More like a cat person…interaction is fine for a pet or two, then I’m going to bite the • out of you.
 
Corporate? Want to hustle somebody elses bags/skis/clubs?
Want to roll up a magazine to try and shove a dookie down the toilet because there’s nobody else to do it for you in Umptesquat, Manitoba?
Want to spend all day on Google translate negotiating with the generalissimo of some Central American airport for hangar space or an armed guard?
Want to vacuum ground Cheerios and clean up …uh… (what is that stain) after a long day flying because they trashed the jet?
Want to be tapped on the shoulder during an ILS to minimums because the coffee pot isn’t working?
Want to spend all day in Teterboro waiting with the APU running because they SAID they’ll be ready to leave at 10am but they ACTUALLY roll in around 4pm.
Want to spend your free time doing expense reports and justifying hotel, rental car, meal expenses?

Airline flying is 99% flying and 1%BS. Corporate flying was 99%BS and 1% flying.
Its like being on reserve your whole career with no work rules.
Its like flying with the least standardized pilots at your airline EVERY DAY.

SO…nope. Do not recommend. It’ll be a dark day before I ever consider any kind of business jet flying ever again.
Absolutely spot on. I say the same thing to the guys i fly with that say they'll try and do corporate when they leave. Sadly some get away with it because they'll be the "senior lead captain" and they'll hire some CFI to push the • with the magazine.
 
They pop up periodically, but then the makers either don't show or lots and lots of pilots show up to shout them down. They never go anywhere.

Personally, I think the biggest deal these days is new guys and gals have NO idea what was lost. To replicate a pension like what @DE727UPS has in today's market on a personal basis is an insane amount of money, and to think that a 15% 401k contribution in any way replicates that is just silly.

Lots of kids these days "grew up" with a market that returned 10% and interest rates at 2%. They think that's the way things are and will go on forever. In reality, those numbers are a historical aberration, and when they swap, and they inevitably will, there's going to be a lot of caterwauling, especially when inflation hits 10%.

To put numbers to it, a $400k earnings average at 60% (a typical major pension in the past) is $240k. Lets say the actuarials think you're going to live 25 years past retirement, and that the current long term interest rate is 3% (VERY high assumption, at the moment). In today dollars, that pension needs 3.1 million in funding.

The other thing people underestimate is the power of the long term interest rate on pensions. Everyone seems to think that pension funding is figured by market returns, which is absolutely not true. ERISA rules drive pension funding calculations, and the only returns that are permitted for the fund are plain old long term interest. Like what you'd get in a CD or savings account. It is actually irrelevant how the fund actually performs, except the balance at the funding calculation. Your fund may have actually returned 10% the year before, but the only way that is figured into the calculation is the balance. But toss in a 3% interest rate over the actuarial period of the beneficiary, and you wind up with an absurd funding requirement.

The interesting thing is lets say interest rates go back up to their long term historical average of about 7%. First off, lots of people who have their entire portfolio revolving around cheap money are going to lose their ass, and the entire housing market, as it exists today, will collapse, but that's going to be a story for another time. That same pension above that needed 3.1 in funding now only requires 2.1 million. What's more interesting is that the remaining pensions out there, have been driven to be funded under the current circumstances will, overnight, be massively overfunded under the new interest rates. With relatively modest interest rates, pensions actually can fund themselves, requiring NO contributions.

It will be very interesting to see what employers do at that point.

What is a pension?
 
I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Rapid City, SD. I like it a lot. That whole part of the country really appeals to me, though.

Lots of live and let live people out there. Folks were happy to just have you around vs cliquish places that treated folks from somewhere else like lepers (Virginia and Ohio, I’m looking at you).
 
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