I'd be extremely skeptical if I were you. Notice the vernacular. The "big check"? You get paid guarantee only for the first check and everything over guarantee the second. So the second paycheck of the month paid on the 20th of the month is much larger than the 1st check, on the 5th. By this time of the year most of these guys have maxed out their 401k personal contributions. So they will add that in. If like me they have exceeded the limitations for total 401k contributions 70K this year I believe. They continue to get the 16.5% which should be invested in retirement, not considered income to be spent on bills. When I communicated with my union about my hesitations to put this 401K "spill" into a modified pension with only an 8% return, which is less than the rate of currency debasement I was told by a rep: "most of these guys just spend it on a jetski or something."
To clear 18K net on the big check at my payscale you'd have to work approximately 107 hrs for the month. With all retirement obligations out of the way for the year. However it would come with the "small check" which for me is 8.5-9K net. With all retirement contributions for the year paid. Really the average net pay if there are no deductions and taxes are done correctly on average per check is about 14K. This is assuming Federal tax only at 35%. It does not include state taxes. Which both of the pilots bragging about pay happen to live in states where state taxes are applicable.
And that would be picking up 4 extra days + 18 days of reserve. 84hrs guarantee + 2, 2 day trips at 10.5 hrs of pay. Is 105 hours. Meaning on a 30 day month they have 8 days free of an obligation to be at work or less than 2.5 hours from being at work in uniform. If you consider that a good QOL for almost 75% of your life. I'm sure my lovely coworkers will come back here and say I'm wrong on several counts like my guarantee is 75 hrs so my first paycheck is less than theirs but we are talking about a variance of 37.5 hours vs 42 hrs. Or approximately $1200 dollars of variance at Federal tax rate of 35% only. Not including a 11.3% tax for California. Or a 9.9% state tax for Oregon.
The only pilots clearing a 18K net average paycheck 2X a month are LCA who are extremely busy and management pilots.