de727ups

I'll respond simply because my name is mentioned.

Some may find me to be a statistical anonomaly. But, from my own experience, the folks I know in professional aviation are hardly running for the hills. All have found the career challenging (we are talking America West, Delta (furloughed). Mesa, and Aloha (furloughed) and, to the man, if you asked them the simple question of "would you do it over", they have told me yes.

So, while the keepers of the "leaving the career forum" paint to the worst case scenario, I can honestly say that I'm not seeing it from personal experience.

And, in the end, if I made $87,534 instead of 292K, I'd still do it over.

But that's just me. To each his own.

Of course, your mileage may very.....

Ski Patrol

I'll throw in the cargo at a later date and eventually weight the #'s for an even more accurate picture. The task just took longer then expected. The discussion drifted toward median pay and I wanted a hard figure for the peeps to look at.

Course if you take 87,534/12 months/300 hrs per diem = The median pilot makes $24.32 per hour at work.

SkyHigh

Man, I wish I could have gotten a little taste of that kind of income as a pilot. I poured my life into this profession and barely cracked 40K for a few months. Few of my friends have done much better.

Skyhigh

siemprerojo

One comment: My niece is taking flying lessons as we speak and has aspirations to become an airline pilot. Her Dad had a great career and I've had to remind her that there are bumps in the road. Do it, and any career for that matter, for the love of it not the money.
My wife is chomping at the bit to return to flying after popping out this kid in July.
So this love of flying goes across all genders.
Can't wait to stay home, fly the 182 and take care of the kid while the wife realizes her dreams

SkyHigh

How can most professions use the line "Do it, and any career for that matter, for the love of it not the money"? It is hard to say that garbage men love their job. What motivation does a plumber or electrician have?

Some people would like to assume that most others merely did not try all that hard and got stuck with hauling other peoples garbage. However, I think that most people go to work because they need money and though they may not love that they do for a living they love what the job does for their life.

In my case I loved flying but did not like what it did to my life. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a profession that provides satisfaction, respect, lifestyle and income all in one package.

Skyhigh

siemprerojo

Too bad. The electricians and plumbers I know are fourth generation and passing on their trade to their kids. I would assume if they didn't like their careers they wouldn't be passing on their trade to their offspring and encouraging them to go to college to be English majors.
Don't know anything about garbage men except their pick up my trash.
In my previous life, I worked on my family ranch and among other things shoveled a lot of sh** out of barns. Didn't mind it as it was great excercise. The chickens and pigs were grateful and I felt appreciated
NWA has a history of treating their employees like the stuff I used to shovel out of barns, but I don't let it affect me. I enjoy the job because I MAKE it enjoyable. I'm not going to let some suit in a office in Eagan or Atlanta ruin my life.
I hope more people will get into their careers because they like it, not because they have to.

SkyHigh

My point exactly. Plumbers, Electricians and garbage men "like their careers" and not the job. They did not grow up dreaming of crawling under houses and picking up other peoples trash at 4 in the morning. Pilots, fishing guides and ski instructors all expect to have fun at work and to make a living at it.

I believe that there is a difference between loving what you do while at work and loving what your career does for you. When people pursue careers that others do as a hobby then you are at a negotiating disadvantage since much of your compensation comes in the form of getting to have fun while at work.

SkyHigh

USMCFLYR

[QUOTE]Seems to me that people with jobs like this love to work with their hands and enjoy the satisfaction of fixing or constructing something - sort of like mechanics or builders.

You should have tried the military Sky. Depending on the situation (of the person) you can acheive all of the above!

USMCFLYR

SkyHigh

[QUOTE=USMCFLYR;540888]I work with plumbers and electricians and I can assure you that the average day is no fun for them. They are cold, wet, muddy and covered in spider webs by the end of the day. They are not having fun but are not totally miserable either. Over time they become accustomed to the job and the day flies by. They do it because it offers a good wage, a lifestyle that is in congress with most others and the promise of a better future.

I thought of joining the military and come from a long family history of Annapolis Graduates and the US Navy. I agree that it is possible to have a fun and satisfying career in the military but not without consequences. My relatives spent their lives on the sea while their home lives went on without them. From my perspective the military offers great pay, benefits and service to your country but all that comes at a huge price.

SkyHigh

hindsight2020

I only did engineering school for 8 years but I did stay at a holiday inn last night. You didn't compute the median of anything; you didn't account for the real distribution function of seniority, the real distribution function of CA/FO ratio, the weigh factor per airline if said airline flies more than one equipment. Your number is an exercise in simple arithmetic mean with wicked right-skewed assumptions (i.e. putting 50% (ie unweighted) of Delta's "CA's" under a simple mean..6400 bodies to be exact, capping off the chart for 76- equipment... ***). Your math is a crude shot at averaging, which is exactly what one cannot do if one intends to accurately portray a statistical sample where a lot of people are on ramen noodles compared to a few who are rolling immorally well... aka the airlines.

Since APC does not provide such distribution functions to properly weigh the payscales, let's say the difference between capping out and nominal CA starting seniority on the charts for the majors (the largest culprits of statistical outliers on the x-axis [pay]) is a generous 20% across the board (I'm left-sizing your wicked right-skewed CA figures for the bulk of legacies to a simple mean since I do not have the distribution functions for CA/FO seniorities and ratios for Delta, American and United). That still puts the MEDIAN for the whole 121 biz at 70K, which is about par for the course. I actually plotted the population distribution as a function of pay scale across all data points given on APC (270 data points) and the x-y scatter makes a funny picture that looks like two people standing on Mt everest looking at a huge purple blob of un-declutterable points at the bottom. What an industry I tell ya....

THE PROBLEM is that you cannot suggest with a straight face that said 70K was the result of working 9-5, being home every night, and having weekends off and the rational assumption of the median that income retention and lateral careerism is a given. As you suggested, when normalized for an hourly figure that could be applied to banking hours you're looking at 19.44/hr...holy sh$t, the opportunity cost is working a 37K 9-5 job and taking the rest of the week off. There's your disparity right there. I can chuck a stone at a bank and land a 35-40K job with a pulse and a degree in basket weaving. This effectively says that the extra time pilots are volunteering their time they are effectively getting paid in takeoff and landings. That's fair enough, but don't call it pay.These computations don't even address the level of applicants that give up within two years of regional work, that would put the number even lower if one were to account for the unemployed and disenchanted who are otherwise qualified.

Look, the reality is that to attain a sustainable airline career that consistenly rewards you above REAL six figure income, when adjusted for hours away from home, discontinuity in pay and the foregoing of the lateral career options that is available to 99% of the population, is to hedge our bets on a statistical crapshoot. This means that the opportunity cost is gonna have to be individually assessed and it's certainly not competitive with other careers that demand time away from home (oil rig work, military and federal civil service, etc). I don't think the sunset at FL370 is really worth that opportunity cost to the median pilot, when all is said and done. But there are enough hobby pilots in the career nowadays to drown that POV for the offering that "it's what you make of it" and that subsidizing non-livable wages for the lower 25th percentile of the sample pool is justifiable, desirable, and worthwhile.

People say, "well 70K is not that bad, I'd do it over again", I say that's disingenous rationalizing from people who are not stuck in that position. It's always "reasonable" to make judgement calls on quality of life when you're not the one being confronted with said constraints. Those who are confronted with such realities and speak up about it are called whiners, after all, poverty is a moral choice according to the peanut gallery of the statistically fortunate. Gimme a break. The reality is that most people DO NOT think 70K as an aggregate income potential goal when pursuing an airline career, SJS included. Most people still choose to delude themselves into thinking that it's a simpleton function of "paying dues" and "staying the course" that's going to reward them with two-sigma to the right of individual median income compensation. That COULD be true of our aforementioned banking job, heck even civil service would net you six figures by holding out long enough, but airline work? Couldn't be farther from the truth.

The reality is that when you put rubber to the pavement with respect to these median income calculation for pilots and translate to actual circumstances, the best the median can cumulatively attain is the prayer of a regional CA lifer job that doesn't get furloughed. Plan accordingly. I did that math and decided said employment conditions and compensation was not worth mortgaging my family and personal relationships. For others that analysis will be different. But stop telling the world 777 widebody CA is "what you make of it" and fundamentally a function of perseverance, REAL LIFE be damned, that's just condescending and misinformed.