Originally Posted by BobSacamano

Uh, have you ever worked a high-salary desk job? Think about what a 70 hour workweek does to your body, your mind, and your family relationships. Think about responding to work emails at the dinner table and fretting about that lawsuit while laying in bed at 3 AM.
Look, flying for a living has its downsides, but it seems to me that airline pilots don’t get paid to just fly airplanes. Flying airplanes is something rich private pilots do for fun on the weekends. What airline pilots are paid to do is to deal with the crappy part of flying — spend half the year in airport hotels, miss holidays with family, deal with passengers, and yes, accept the risk that a medical issue can cost your job.

I’m nothing more than an aspiring airline pilot, but I’m sick of pilots on this forum and elsewhere who’ve got no idea of how lucky they are to fly for a living. As a teenager in 2002 I took the advice of a jaded American pilot who discouraged me from becoming a pilot because he was tired of the post-9/11 airline industry. He’d never made his living doing anything other than flying. 16 years later, he’s making $300k flying 777s across the Pacific once a week and I’m considering throwing away a successful non-aviation career and taking a huge pay cut just to start at the bottom in professional aviation. It’s taken all this time just to re-learn what I already knew but allowed myself to be talked out of: I want to fly for a living.

I’d be much better off today if I’d taken my advice from someone who’d seen the grass on both sides and better appreciated the fact that airline pilots have it much better than the MBAs, accountants, and lawyers clawing for C-suite gigs.

Originally Posted by busdriver12

Pretty sure we aren't getting paid the big bucks to stay in airport hotels. It's because it takes a significant amount of experience and effort to get these jobs, it's a lot of responsibility, and we still have unions. Flying a Cessna is a little different than flying heavy equipment.

There are jobs that are well paid that aren't flying or soul sucking. My son is paid $220K/yr to work 40 hour weeks and sleep in his own bed every night. He also gets unlimited paid time off, breakfast, lunch and dinner cooked, free alcohol, massages, and hundreds of thousands of $$ in stock... and he's in his twenties. Not many airline pilots with that deal.

I'm sorry you got talked out of doing what you wanted to, but don't buy into the idea that this is a fantasy job. Plenty of misery, difficult and stressful situations, health/sleep issues, and that's not even touching the stress of furloughs, job loss and medical issues.

Originally Posted by SmoothLanderJ

Alaska Airlines 3rd year FO (started year 4 in November)
Arbitrated contract effective November 1st
Live in base, no premium trips
$142,909, includes per diem
$17,493 company contribution 401K (at 13.5%, 15% as of 11/1)
920ish hrs credit, 855 hrs flown
Average 16-17 days off, picked up pilot trips down to 15 usually