Airline transition, Where to?

[FrankTheTank]

For the networking angel i'm thinking of going ANG or Navy reserves, lots of networking to be done there I understand.

Good plan and they give you money to do it! The only thing that is a little tougher to come by may be gouge.. So KEEP IN TOUCH with your bros and compadres that do go to the training commands and such.. The good news/bad news is that one of my buds in recurrent this week was told that it may be TWO more years before we hire. I think we will have a few internals and another handful to fill A300 HKG and B757 CDG right seats.. Who knows? They seem to take time off and then have huge waves.. Think SWA is doing some sort of similar slowdown? Good Luck!

 

[Nose]

Hoo-boy, was I unpopular with the Kool-Aid crowd on the third floor.

We should trade stories, I work for the same knuckleheads on the same third floor.

 

[Nose]

I can understand guys who have lost their retirement wanting to go beyond age 60 --- and while it screws up seniority, retirement calculations, and promotions for those junior, the old guys deserve it; they have put in their time, they rate it.

Gotta call BS on you on that one. (I know, I know...HERESY!!!)

Why should a guy who has "benefitted" from age 60 retirements his whole career get to stay longer at the expense of all of the rest of us? I keep getting told (and I believe you said this too) that this career is timing, timing, timing. I completely agree. So why do we get screwed because of someone else's bad timing.

All I want is the opportunity the guy before me got. No more, no less.

Age 65 is a classic case of "I got mine, pull up the ladder."

Prater (ALPA pres.) says "We're taking it back" but to the junior guys, so far all he has done is give it away - against the wishes of a majority of ALPA.

Best.

 

[A4sForever]

....Why should a guy who has "benefitted" from age 60 retirements his whole career get to stay longer at the expense of all of the rest of us? I keep getting told (and I believe you said this too) that this career is timing, timing, timing. I completely agree. So why do we get screwed because of someone else's bad timing.

All I want is the opportunity the guy before me got. No more, no less....

As do the rest of us .... no more, no less.

I used to feel the way you do -- until the spectre of NO RETIREMENT became a reality. When you have been "promised" a retirement for 20-30 years, planned accordingly, and then have it swept out from under you when you're in the last 4-5 good earning years of your career to placate the corporate bottom line ... I'd say something is wrong.

And it's just as wrong for the younger guys to say: "move over, screw your retirement, get outta' my way". I could get into an esoteric discussion of the Deregulation Act and LPP's and and the timing for the "date of hire" ... but I won't. Suffice it to say, I've been there before. We thought we were getting "screwed" for the benefit of the "older guys" (and we were at the time), but things have a way of working out in the end.

You are right -- as am I -- it's always timing. But for all those 20-30 odd years of "timing" ... these guys were promised a retirement. They "gave up" things to get you hired and in the front door. They gave up things to get other things -- additional crew members junior to them being one of those things. The monetary gains they gave up weren't "free money".

The senior guys have paved the way and some have lost a lot. I didn't want to work past 60. I don't judge others' motives as I don't walk in their shoes.

 

[HAL Pilot]

Corporate life can be good......and live on the beeper.

These two are opposites....

I've tried corporate life. Corporate life can be good - if NOT on a beeper. Being on a beeper means no schedule and no QOL. There are some great corporate jobs out there. I have a friend flying for Chevron. Set schedule with hard days off and only occasionally on a beeper (as the "ready" crew). Non-beeper corporate jobs are few and far between.

Airline = no beeper and set schedule. I'll stick with airline.

Just my 2 cents. I'm glad you enjoy corporate. I will admit my last corporate gig as a Citation Captain was great. 90% set schedule with occasional pop-ups. Owner hired contract Captain as his expense if pop-up interfered with my daughter visits. No beeper. Every trip owner or son bought the booze at night and paid for the lap dances. Only catering I had to worry about was a case or two of Bud Light. Contract cleaners taking care of the plane.......then the owner's wife found out what half the trips were really for.....plane sold so owner didn't lose 1/2 of his business to his wife and her attorney.....and I am unexpectedly out of a job (which is another big draw back of corporate).....

Some fractional gigs can be okay too. Net Jets is a great place. Good pay, set schedule, good benefits. Right now it is the only one I would recommend. I have 3 friends there including 1 ex-airline furloughee that turned down his recall to stay with Net Jets.

 

[BeanFighter]

Glad you like the airlines HAL. I would be too if I could have gotten hired again after getting furloughed.
So I'll put up with the beeper, actually it's not a beeper, the company bought me a cool phone with unlimited usage. I keep having to call in to see if there is any flying to be done. Not like I don't fly much, I get unlimited use of a Pilatus PC-7 to use (fuel too) if flying is slow, my boys love it, teaching them aerobatics is great. Of course it does get busy sometimes, spent a month this last summer in Dubrovnik, Venice, Tel Aviv, and Valencia. Flying our Global Express around the Med can be trying, expecially when you switch seats every leg. Now the Global is not as big as most airline equipment, and it's the biggest jet we have, but we can go fast in our Citation X, west to east coast in 4 hours. But, I also have to fly a CJ3 which is a "Slowtation" all the way. Good thing we use it mostly for short hops, and usually to short runways, like South Lake Tahoe and other ski resorts. The company even made me get a single pilot rating in it, along with the other 2 type ratings. Good thing they paid for the schooling, I definately could not afford the $100 grand they put in to my training. And whats up with starting me out well above six figs for a salary with all the benefits. And I have to live in SFO with all the freakin liberals, what a town. Boy I miss Krock. I have to walk a whole 5 minutes to get to the beach. Good thing I get 3 weeks paid vacation. I need the time off to..... what, hang out with my wife and kids more than I do now. I'm home 24/5-7 sometimes. Damn, I hope the beeper goes off soon.....

Just foolin Hal, I know that all flying jobs, airline or other have goods and others, but remember that what I could not attain by obtaining an airline job worked out well for me. Moral of this story is if you want to fly for a good living, there are many roads to the top of Mt. Fuji.
Keep the faith!

 

[HAL Pilot]

BeanFighter - sounds like you found one of the good corporate gigs. I'd probably stick at it too if I had it.

But you have to admit, yours is the exception and not the rule. And it normally takes a lot of networking and luck to find a job like yours. Networking means paying the price at lesser corporate jobs. And then it is luck to have the right timing or be in the right place to get it.

I agree there are other paths than the airlines. I just think that on the average, the airlines (majors) give the best QOL and pay.

 

[HooverPilot]

Ok, I saw this on another site and would like to see if anyone else see's any holes in the basic data... It was done by an AF guy, but the pay and bonus are the same.

The idea is that it is a comparison of staying to retirement as an O-4, Staying to retirement as an O-5 or getting out at the end of your commitment. In each scenario, you then get hired at SWA. There are some assumptions that have been made in the data, (like airline upgrade time) that could be debated, but are the basics solid?

Here are the spreadsheets showing all three scenarios. It's not financially better to leave.

Scenario 1: Stay in, take 5 year bonus, don't make O-5

Scenario 2: Stay in, take 5 year bonus, make O-5</p>

Scenario 3: Get out and go direct to SWA;

 

[FrankTheTank]

Good Gouge.. However, just a few lacking things... I am sure there are more..

-Doesn't account for any pay raises other than longevity.
-Doesn't account for any extra trip pick-ups.
-Doesn't account for SELRES income and subsequent Reserve retirement.
-Doesn't for 2nd career retirement (401K compound interest or loss of).
-Doesn't account for QOL which is not always = to $$$

Just a few (and of those few); they can also be negatives depending on what happens to the Airline... Also with this new legislation, it may take longer to get that 'Dream Job'.. I know we are talking about not hiring for 3 years and the VP even threw out the 'F' word- 'Furlough'. However, it is extremely unrealistic and think it is a bait and switch to get folks to bid Paris and Hong Kong...

 

[HackerF15E]

The spreadsheet was done by me this summer and originally posted in a thread at APC.com in August. I posted the jpegs above at FI.com yesterday.

The purpose of doing the sheet was to compare it to a spreadsheet I saw about 8 years ago (pre 9/11) that showed it was SIGNIFICANTLY more beneficial to leave the military up until year 17. I was interested to see how things looked with a current pay scale.

No, it doesn't account for pay raises and other things that my crystal ball doesn't show very well. There are sh*tloads of assumptions because there have to be. Both in the military and at the airline there will be pay that will be more than the minimum, but I wasn't looking to do a "best case", I was looking for a middle-of-the-road case.

I also had to just throw a stake in the ground and put something in concrete with a multitude of assumptions, otherwise it would be impossible to make a comparison (like a P-sub-S chart that is only good at a specific altitude, configuration, and fuel weight on the mythical "standard" day). The fact that those numbers aren't *exact* isn't important...it's the relative income that *is* important...and the picture that is painted is that the post-military contract income through forced airline retirement is pretty damn near the same -- and this is at one of the current "industry leading" pay rates.

If anyone wants the Excel file so they can change it up, add things, whatever, I'd be happy to email it to them and would be interested to see their results.

 

[A4sForever]

One thing that's not factored into the spreadsheets and pay scales ...

.... in the airlines, when you're done with your flight ... you're done with your flight. You don't take your work home or to the hotel wit' you.

Now that oughta' be worth something.

 

[GroundPounder]

A4's,

In Reading between the lines a bit, and guessing based on where you flew, were you a contemporary of Len Morgan? I think that he would have been a generation ahead of you, but did you cross paths on the line?

 

[corvairdroptop]

The purpose of doing the sheet was to compare it to a spreadsheet I saw about 8 years ago (pre 9/11) that showed it was SIGNIFICANTLY more beneficial to leave the military up until year 17. I was interested to see how things looked with a current pay scale.

Good looking spreadsheet -- I think it proves its point that departing now may not be as lucrative as one might have assumed.

Two factors concerning the sheets themselves:

1. BAH and BAS come with a tax advantage. That may already be factored into those numbers; I don't know where they came from.
2. A finance professor would discount the pay to favor higher numbers earlier in life. This is particularly important if you're the money-saving type. If anyone wants the "answer" to the mathematical question, you can use the PV function in Excel.

BAH/BAS isn't a big deal, but the time-value of the numbers could be very significant.

 

[HackerF15E]

One thing that's not factored into the spreadsheets and pay scales ...

.... in the airlines, when you're done with your flight ... you're done with your flight. You don't take your work home or to the hotel wit' you.

Now that oughta' be worth something.

It actually IS worth quite a bit...and I think is the most significant reason guys leave Uncle Sam, now that there is not such a difference in the pay.

Don't get me wrong...the point of the spreadsheets is not to convince guys to stay in. It is just to provide a datapoint to take in concert with other datapoints with respect to quality of life.

 

[A4sForever]

It actually IS worth quite a bit...and I think is the most significant reason guys leave Uncle Sam, now that there is not such a difference in the pay.

Don't get me wrong...the point of the spreadsheets is not to convince guys to stay in. It is just to provide a datapoint to take in concert with other datapoints with respect to quality of life.

UNLESS I just "got lucky" (and that's ALWAYS better than bein' "good") ..... If I decided AIRLINES and I had to make the decision TODAY, with the benefit of hindsight and experience .... I would:

1. Stay in and fly with UNCLE for anything required to get a "retirement" up to and including 20 years out of my life .... whether it's all active or a combo of active/reserve. The age cutoff is not a factor any more like it was in my day. BUT: get that military retirement. It's one of the few things you CAN count on ... well, kinda .... ... it is a buffer so you and the family DO NOT HAVE TO GO WITH THE "Regionals" if you choose not to ... it buys you time and after you're hired it might buy you a new car or some other toys every year. It's a no-brainer if you ask me.

2. During the last 1 1/2 +/- years of useful consciousness w/UNCLE, I would be preparing myself AND the family for getting out, getting all my FAA shit in one bag, starting the application process, and be ready to MOVE on job opportunities at a moment's notice during the last 3-6 months of active duty. I'm specifically talkin' nterviews, networking, ratings, KEEPING CURRENT, logbook all correct & complete ... all of the required stuff. Oh yeah, and get at least one GOOD business suit/shoes/tie so you "look" professional for the interview.

3. Sign up and pay the $$$ for one of these airline "gouge" memberships/organizations. They will connect you with like-minded guys and keep you in the loop on what's up and what's down with the respective airlines. I did when FAPA was new and it was well worth the info, mutual support, and gouge.

Good gouge makes the heart rest easy ...