Outof410

Agreed.

Pay raises will come down to supply and demand. I was kinda hoping for Duty rigs too, I cant even remember if that was in the survey though.

Lahey

Totally! Been here for about that long and ditching a the AA class in 2.5 yrs to go to another WO’d sounds reasonable. Hopefully envoy calls soon!

4thgenaviator

....how is that bad?

flybywp

Am I missing something here? Don't get me wrong, 13 days off is great. But what fantasy land is everyone living in that you think AA is going to be the one to raise pay at all three WOs? If anyone has actually taken the time to watch the SOTA each quarter, you'll see AA's forecast labor cost and quickly realize this will not be in the cards for a long time. Sure, it's possible at some point, but shouldn't higher pay come in the form of higher hourly wages written in a contract rather than temporary new hire signing bonuses? And when exactly will AA dish out these raises? Next year? Classes are full. Envoy is hiring 70+ per month. PSA is doing the same. It's not very hard to fill classes of 20 so PDT classes are also full. So what reason does AA have to give us raises without it being written in a contract?

And why exactly do we not deserve Endeavor rates? Or at least something close? Because we have a flow? I don't want to get ahead of myself here as we haven't even seen the terms yet, but I'm seeing a total 180 from some who were just a few weeks ago preaching higher pay.

AZFlyer

You're missing the point. Supply and demand will determine when we get a significant pay raise, and it's likely that it will occur with similar timing at all regionals, not just the AA regionals, as it did with the last round of pay raises. We are definitely not at that point, though.

So, getting good QOL improvements with even just a couple bucks raise is a completely reasonable expectation within the context of the current industry climate. I'm not labeling that "good" or "bad". That's just how it is.

In the mean time, keep your panties on until we see the details in the actual language.

Goingupinverted

Thank you! I thought I was the only one thinking this. My buddy who is in the military, told me they pay brand new zero hours students just under $50,000 a year to get TRAINED to fly a turboPROP. FO’s you’re flying a freaking jet or will be soon! Captains aren’t making as much as they are worth. Yes, I understand the goverment isn’t a coprporate entity and the reason for pay differences are many reasons. I use this as an example though because there is no reason you shouldn’t value yourself at least a livable wage if the military trains students for “free” and pays more just to train them in a single-engine turboprop!
Think back to all those times where you were sweating it out in the bug smasher going around the pattern for the umpteenth time. Remember how much it costed you just to fly, let alone pay for check rides. Sure it’s better than what we have now, but so was when industry standard pay went from $22,000 to $30,000 just a few years ago...

67Creek

I don't think significant pay raises will come until one of two things happens

(1) They run out of new tricks to source pilots. They can't lower hiring minimums any more, the cadet pipelines become unable to keep up, they've hired all of the civilian helicopter pilots willing to transition, the military ramps up investment in retention, and they've taken everyone out of the charter world that's willing to consider 121. At that point, there are still a few more things they can do, like ab initio training so recruiting gains exposure to high-schoolers and other non-pilots, or start proving sponsorship so they can hire foreign pilots, and who knows what else.

(2) The effects of hiring bottom-of-the-barrel pilots starts to show up. There is no doubt that the regionals are hiring people they don't want to hire, and upgrading people they don't want to upgrade, due to financial considerations and operational necessity. You can bet they (the regionals' management teams) are tracking the various sources of pilots, the various identifiable characteristics of those pilots, and looking for correlations with training outcomes and operational performance. As all of these pilots hired with lower minimums and non-traditional pathways start make their way through the system, they'll figure out how to better identify the problem children, the pilots that cost the company more (in $$$ or in risk) than it would cost to raise pay and attract better candidates.

It's all supply and demand in the end. There's still quite a bit of untapped supply. I wouldn't expect to see massive raises any time soon until/unless one of the above comes to fruition.

surfcc11

Why do regional pilots sell themselves so short? Do you think there is a bigger "supply" of pilot trying to get to AA or Piedmont? By that logic AA would pay less. We literally do the same job, moving the same passengers. Why should our QOL be terrible and our pay sub par? I just want to be paid what our passengers think we are paid. I want the quality of life they think we have.

tomdaniels27

Perhaps we should wait until we have the actual agreement before conjecture. We all want qol and pay improvements and each of us will have opportunity to weigh in with how much we feel we’re worth (or how little). In any case let’s wait and see.

Lahey

Mr. Tom Daniels is making too much sense. Making my head spin.