How do you live...

M

meritflyer

Well-Known Member
How do pilots working at low wage paying carriers (Great Lakes, Mesa, ect.) live??? I have a friend that just got hired by Great Lakes and is making a whopping $15 an hour on 75 hours a month! Baggers at grocery stores make more than that!

Geese, its almost like PFT/PFJ at those wages. :sarcasm:



Disclaimer: Opinion only
 
meritflyer said:
How do pilots working at low wage paying carriers (Great Lakes, Mesa, ect.) live??? I have a friend that just got hired by Great Lakes and is making a whopping $15 an hour on 75 hours a month! Baggers at grocery stores make more than that!

Geese, its almost like PFT/PFJ at those wages. :sarcasm:



Disclaimer: Opinion only
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Welcome to the real world of professional flying.

No other equivalent profession has seen an active degradation in pay. My father retired 18 years ago and was making over $100k/yr 25 years ago at a very small airline flying a DC-9-40.

25 years later and pilots are making less for for larger (more complex) aircraft.
 
WOW, yeah with all that training you do that is crappy. My dad is a retired 767/757 Captain and made a butt load back in the day. I had this discussion with him the other day and he seems convinced it will improve. There is always a second job one can obtain, perhaps bagging groceries = )
 
Well there's people that will pay to be a pilot. An airline or company sees that, so why would they pay a pilot a good paycheck? In fact, if the pilot is willing to pay to fly, why would the company even pay the pilot at all?
 
pilot602 said:
Welcome to the real world of professional flying.

No other equivalent profession has seen an active degradation in pay. My father retired 18 years ago and was making over $100k/yr 25 years ago at a very small airline flying a DC-9-40.

25 years later and pilots are making less for for larger (more complex) aircraft.
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So what caused this in the industry? Just too many pilots now and not enough jobs? Too many PFT programs? Why did the pay go down so much?
 
Mavmb said:
So what caused this in the industry? Just too many pilots now and not enough jobs? Too many PFT programs? Why did the pay go down so much?
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Regionals.

There never really has been a glut of pilots but there has been the "stepping stone" mentality. Regionals paid cr@p because most people spent at most two or three years with them and then they moved onto the majors where the pay was quite good.

But the majors stopped hiring six years ago and now the regionals have left "regional" flying behind and have stepped in/up to mainline status but still pay low wages and still havethe old mainlines paying their gas bills for them.

Futhermore, as a side factor to "supply and demand" the supply of pilots has been steadily shrinking over the last five years and instead of upping pay the regionals have simply lowered minimums. Even in the "glory days" before 9/11 the lowest anyone got hired on at was 500 hours and that was at small regionals. Nowadays we have Mesa, arguably one of the largest "regionals" in the U.S., hiring pilots at 250 hours. And they ain't the only ones going that low.

Sooner or later we'll actually hit rock bottom. There will be a few accidents in small jets that raise question, service will degrade below the already low standards of today and the cylce will start to reverse itself. But, we haven't hit the bottom yet. I think the next three to five years are going to be the ugliest this industry has ever seen.
 
Great Lakes seems to be the lowest of all these "regional" carriers in terms of pay. Even per diem is just a buck per hour. Skywest starts an FO in the CRJ at 19bucks an hour(still sucks ) but improves to 35 bucks an hour your second year(slightly better). With Great Lakes it is a measly 17 bucks for a second year as an FO on the B1900. All this is taken from airlinepilotcentral. Work rules are different from each carrier and they can dictate how much you earn overall. The average normal minimum is 75 hours but that is just the minimum pay. It's likely the pay will be a little higher than the guarantee but it still wouldn't be that much higher since you're at the bottom of seniority as first year FO. IMO the pay at Great Lakes is horrible and employee morale sucks at Mesa. If you're not comfortable with the pay don't choose that company. I guess you can say that first year pay at Air Wisconsin with 23,000 is better than 16,000 at Great Lakes. That is a few hundred more so you can afford to eat an extra pack of ramen and pay off school loans. Being given a choice of Great Lakes or freight, I'd rather go with freight for a year or two. You can live cheaply with an income in the low 20k for first year but the 15-16000 take home pay for Great lakes is just degrading.

I also think some of those pilots have a second source of income or they have some help from home.
 
I agree. The purpose of regionals was to act as a feeder to the major carrier's hubs. When the majors slipped over the last five years we have seen regionals get larger aircraft, hubs, longer routes and more jets. Several of them acted as a major to an extent.

This has been a huge problem for the transportation industry. The low pay right now is due to an over-supply of pilots. Remember, what you charge $5 for, someone else will charge $3.
 
Ask your friendly local RJDC supporter who was suing for larger and larger jets at the regionals for regional pay scales. Check out the early 2000 scale for a NWA DC-9-15 and compare that the a CRJ-700/900 scale.
 
meritflyer said:
The low pay right now is due to an over-supply of pilots.
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Bullsh*t. There is no over supply of pilots. There never has been and there sure as hell isn't going to be over the next decade.

If, as you say, there are so many pilots running around explain the ever decreasing hiring minimums? These airlines aren't scraping the bottom of the barrel for the hell of it ... it's because they can't find people to fly their aircraft and aren't willing to pay fair wages to get/keep people.
 
I work with a guy who makes $25,000 a year has a mortgage,wife, and 4 kids. His wife doesn't work just him. If he can do it you should be able to survive on 19K being single.
 
scoobs said:
I work with a guy who makes $25,000 a year has a mortgage,wife, and 4 kids. His wife doesn't work just him. If he can do it you should be able to survive on 19K being single.
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Well, then, so should you ...

But let's see how far that $25k takes him when a kid gets sick, or he get's sick and can't work, or [insert any number of very common and likely scenarios here]. Just because he's squeaking by doesn't mean he's "living."
 
scoobs said:
I work with a guy who makes $25,000 a year has a mortgage,wife, and 4 kids. His wife doesn't work just him. If he can do it you should be able to survive on 19K being single.
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Ladies and gentlemen, this is why we have crappy pay.
 
The reason there are these really low rates at regionals is because they were at one time, just a quick stepping stone to better things. Sure, $20 first year pay sucks, but you deal with it, and two years later you are a captain making $65 an hour and then two years later you are an FO again at a major making bank (and going and spending a week in France:)) Unfortuantly it doesn't work that way anymore. It can take many years to upgrade at a regional now, and even once you do have the four stripes, there isn't that many places to go so you are stuck making $65 an hour for a long time. The problem is that the top end of the regional scale has pilots who have decided to make their career there and have no desire to move on. Unfortunatly they are mostly the ones in the negotiating position and hence you get these stupidly low first year rates. I just found out that when my airline went from flying props to jets the company told them that they could raise wages by 5.50 an hour total. Guess what? Captains got a $5 dollar pay raise and the FOs got 50 cents. What's the fix? Get the regionals back to being a step to the majors. Easiest way is to get the flying back at the upper level. So the next RJDC guy you see.... kick him. Naw, I kid... sort of.
 
regional jet defense coalition...no further comments. Feel free to google them or do some searches on some web sites and you'll feel how quite a few in the industry feel about them.

Glad to see most regional pilots are against them...:)
 
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