Average pay for SWA $300k by 2020

[QUOTE="Grum.Man, post: 2131059, member: 20625] On top of that I would have 75k in debt from a flying school and any more money that would have to be borrowed to stay afloat until I started making a livable income again

75k? Do you not have a PPL? It'd only cost me another 6k to get from 170hrs to 250, then maybe another 5k to knock out the commercial complex+CFI training. I don't get how you'd get 75k in debt unless you go 0 to hero AND pick one of the most expensive ways to do it like ATP.[/QUOTE]
Where is your multi engine, ATP, and the other 1,000 hours going to come from that you need to get a regional job? But yes I was quoting ATP prices. But most schools that even go from private to ATP are close to 60k.
 
75k? Do you not have a PPL? It'd only cost me another 6k to get from 170hrs to 250, then maybe another 5k to knock out the commercial complex+CFI training. I don't get how you'd get 75k in debt unless you go 0 to hero AND pick one of the most expensive ways to do it like ATP.
Where is your multi engine, ATP, and the other 1,000 hours going to come from that you need to get a regional job? But yes I was quoting ATP prices. But most schools that even go from private to ATP are close to 60k.[/QUOTE]
You usually get a flying job after your commercial license or become a CFI. No one in their right mind pays for the rest of their flight time to get to ATP mins.
 
The other thing to remember is that we're in an upswing and times are good. But this is a cyclical industry, and it won't always be this way. People have short memories - it wasn't long ago that guys were making just a fraction of what they are now. So I tend to stick with my original advice - do this job because you have to fly and can't imagine doing anything else. When times are good, enjoy it while stashing away cash for when things swing the other direction. This is a good job, but jumping in with your eyes closed because of today's hourly rates is a recipe for heartache and disappointment down the road.

All good points.

I was thinking:

Great! You wanna be an airline transport pilot

#1 What your medical history like? How responsible are you?
#2 What's your biological parents medical history like?
#3 What's you biological grandparents medical history?

There is no way I'd invest that kind of money without considering all the risks. Start with what you know. Accidents can happen anywhere along the journey and it would suck to have an enormous amount invested into something that can easily be taken away from you buy hereditary disease, bug bite or motor vehicle accident.
 
At that age I would go in a heart beat. Especially if I didn't have any debt.

I don't have any debt at all so that is the plan as of now...I think it is smart to pay for my ratings with my engineering job instead of taking a 50k loan out...
 
Those salaries look great until you realize how old you are when you finally start making that. I'm 32 now, if I quit my job now making right around 6 figures to go after a flying career it would be almost 10 years before I started making what I do now. On top of that I would have 75k in debt from a flying school and any more money that would have to be borrowed to stay afloat until I started making a livable income again. That is a lot of making up to do especially in a retirement account.

Yes I would still do it if I thought I could financially because it seems like it would be a way more enjoyable job.. haha


After your second year at a major you're looking at six figures these days.

and yes, it's an incredible job.
 
I'm sure there are cheaper ways of going about it on your own, just depends on how quickly you want to do it.
After your second year at a major you're looking at six figures these days.

and yes, it's an incredible job.
so I've heard, you are still looking at 4-5 years in a regional first.
 
Sorry, but there you're talking mostly software guys. Despite the department that the courses are taught in, it ain't engineering, it's mostly writing code.

--Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, Masters of Engineering

Engineer: " a person who has scientific training and who designs and builds complicated products, machines, systems, or structures"

Sounds like every software engineer's job that I know of.
 
Those salaries look great until you realize how old you are when you finally start making that. I'm 32 now, if I quit my job now making right around 6 figures to go after a flying career it would be almost 10 years before I started making what I do now. On top of that I would have 75k in debt from a flying school and any more money that would have to be borrowed to stay afloat until I started making a livable income again. That is a lot of making up to do especially in a retirement account.

Yes I would still do it if I thought I could financially because it seems like it would be a way more enjoyable job.. haha


IF you ever make what you do now....
 
Engineer: " a person who has scientific training and who designs and builds complicated products, machines, systems, or structures"

Sounds like every software engineer's job that I know of.

I think his point is less to slag software engineers but rather to point out that software engineers are a pretty unique segment of engineering. Especially those in California making 400k (with a cost of living translating it to like 100k a year).

I graduated from Lamar University, which is a big engineering school. So I know a ton of engineers that immediately went into the industries surrounding that area of Texas (mostly oil related industries and infrastructure stuff in Houston/Port Author area, so mechanical/electrical/civil engineers, etc.). Many of them have decent jobs, better then most college grads coming out. But it ain't gonna be 300k anytime soon, if ever.
 
I think his point is less to slag software engineers but rather to point out that software engineers are a pretty unique segment of engineering. Especially those in California making 400k (with a cost of living translating it to like 100k a year).

I graduated from Lamar University, which is a big engineering school. So I know a ton of engineers that immediately went into the industries surrounding that area of Texas (mostly oil related industries and infrastructure stuff in Houston/Port Author area, so mechanical/electrical/civil engineers, etc.). Many of them have decent jobs, better then most college grads coming out. But it ain't gonna be 300k anytime soon, if ever.

OK, I'll buy that.

Software, like a lot of things (including airline jobs!), is cyclical. Some years, you wonder if you'll have a job. I can't count how many of my co-workers have been laid off in my career, though I have to admit that I've been lucky so far. Been doing this 25 years, so I've seen the dot com boom, the bust, the 2008 meltdown, etc. I'm doing great right now, but I know there will soon be a period I'll be much less happy with. I'm not complaining; it's the nature of the beast that has, overall, treated me quite well.

I don't think software is unique in this. Other engineering fields get outsize pay in cycles at times. When I was in school, chemical and petroleum engineers were prized. Nuclear engineers are often in high demand, though not at the moment. It's very much a case of supply and demand. Right now, demand for SWE is exceedingly high. Free supply is nearly non-existent. Couple that with a very high gradient of talent and you have a perfect storm of many top companies all vying for the same tiny pool of people.
 
Considering what a bus driver or first line supervisor at the Washington area MTA makes, that sounds like a fair amout.
 
Back in the late 90s I knew some IT folks who took their severance from the dot-com bust and put it towards an airline career. You can imagine how that worked out.
 
After your second year at a major you're looking at six figures these days.

and yes, it's an incredible job.

Timing is everything. The person to whom I'm related by marriage took 18 years, at a major, to crack six figures. Now 4 years later, twice that amount, plus. But still, we raised a family, and it is a great job. Time now for some serious retirement investing catch-up. And possibly updated avionics. :rolleyes:
 
Back in the late 90s I knew some IT folks who took their severance from the dot-com bust and put it towards an airline career. You can imagine how that worked out.

Yep, gold rush (or as I call it "goat finances") financial behavior seldom works out. Look at oil-n-gas people, another example of goats rushing to the pasture and moaning every time it dries up. Then the line of repos, housing downgrades and the resultant divorces, foreclosures and airplane/boat sell offs. And everybody acts like a victim or that they didn't see it coming. Rudderless ships aimlessly weathervaning, looking for anything, anything!, that pays 100K and doesn't require significant time in training. It would be one thing to not know better before the internet-connected society, but post internet? No way, you got no excuse.

Then there are those who recognize the dynamic and basically stash the money in the good times to weather the loss of income. Amortized for those periods of trough, these vocations are not as lucrative as the good times imply. And that's the point. It's not blasphemy, it just has to be planned for, while understanding you're not as rich as your income implies because you can't project it out to 30 years. It's not that complicated really.

But the goat demographic doesn't get that. They want the job at the feast phase of the salary range, and can't downgrade from there. Suburbs are chock-full of goats. Which is why they're always losing their house-poor ass and wrecking their lives. You can give a financially illiterate man a 10K/mo job, and he'll lose his ass in 10 months like clockwork.
 
Bottom line is...if I could go back in time and teach myself a lesson I would say, "Take out 75k loan and go be a pilot! - college is for fools!"
 
By 2030 most passenger carrying flights will no longer have human operators. It makes no sense when computers can do a better job. You better believe this will happen, it will be better for the industry (by reducing the cost of a problematic unionized workforce), better for us (reduced cost will result in cheaper fares for us) and it will be safer (no alcohol/drug problem, hijacking, pilot sponsored terrorism, suicide, etc).

What you're seeing now is a brief uptick probably going to peak at 2020 then go down.

GA will be unaffected.

Two-pilot cockpits in the airline industry are going nowhere any time soon

There's a reason subways still have drivers even though safe automation to replace them has existed for decades.

At the very least, they'll always be a single pilot on board.
 
Reading this article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielr...southwest-airlines-to-operate-conventionally/) it claims that _average_ SWA pilot pay is currently $230k and will be $300k by 2020.

For the senior guys, sure that seems right, but as an "average" it seems a bit high. Is it really already that high? Maybe I could afford a career switch after all.... :)

Anybody actually read the article? Current pay rates at SWA for a senior Captain is $216 an hour after 12 years of service. Add 30% to that and you get $280 an hour. In round numbers a pilot cannot fly more than 1000 hours in a year so if you use that number, you go from 216,000 a year to 280,000 a year. That is based solely on salary. That does not include bonuses or any additional things that may increase pay rates. First Officers are a percentage less than that.
 
Those salaries look great until you realize how old you are when you finally start making that. I'm 32 now, if I quit my job now making right around 6 figures to go after a flying career it would be almost 10 years before I started making what I do now. On top of that I would have 75k in debt from a flying school and any more money that would have to be borrowed to stay afloat until I started making a livable income again. That is a lot of making up to do especially in a retirement account.

Yes I would still do it if I thought I could financially because it seems like it would be a way more enjoyable job.. haha

I'm 43 so it even makes less sense, considering what I make now in the I.T. world with specific specializations; although I'm just over 300 hours now flying dogs, I'll be at the minimum in a few years just from animal rescue alone.
 
Anybody actually read the article? Current pay rates at SWA for a senior Captain is $216 an hour after 12 years of service. Add 30% to that and you get $280 an hour. In round numbers a pilot cannot fly more than 1000 hours in a year so if you use that number, you go from 216,000 a year to 280,000 a year. That is based solely on salary. That does not include bonuses or any additional things that may increase pay rates. First Officers are a percentage less than that.

You're assuming you literally only get paid for flying. There are numerous ways to credit way above what you are actually flying. Heck, I've credited over 150 hours while managing to fly less than 90 in a month.
 
Not sure why any thread about a pilot job has to turn into a penis measuring contest. There are people on this board that own and operate cabin class twins, and even turbine stuff. My stupid airline gig isn't going to impress anyone, and I'm not even one of the higher paid ones. I like what I do, and my company keeps me comfortable. But there are tons of humans on this planet across many different careers that make more than I do. And that's just fine with me.

SWA pilots just got a raise, and that's cool. Good for them! :)

Exactly..!!!

For me to get out of my businesses and go to an airline would mean a pay cut, and less work, and less time off until retirement. I like what I do and the money I make, even though some airline pilots look down at me because all I do is clank around in a 400 series Cessna. But I like the long hours as well as the pay. I take summers off so I can fly around Alaska for peanuts. In a few years the only work I will do is attend quarterly board meetings.

If being an airline pilot and working for someone else makes that person happy, then great.!! I like the money a doctor friend of mine makes, but he has to be around sick people all day and touch them.....yuck, but that makes him happy, he has a lot of satisfaction in what he does.

Don't take me wrong, some people are perfectly happy with putting in their 8 hour day, then going home and enjoying the family life. There is nothing wrong with that and for those that do that and are happy, more power to ya..!!
 
A pals son.....graduated with aeronautical engineering degree, went air force, instructor, then flew U2 for four thousand hours, then as Lt. COl. Left airforce after 20 and flys left seat for major. Worth 250, 300? I think so.
 
A pals son.....graduated with aeronautical engineering degree, went air force, instructor, then flew U2 for four thousand hours, then as Lt. COl. Left airforce

Just an FYI, about every military pilot on this board has circa the same career path you just described, down to the formal education, yours truly included. That's a pretty average pilot tenure in the air force you just described. We're carbon copies of each other. That's kinda the pilot profession in a nutshell though.
 
You're assuming you literally only get paid for flying. There are numerous ways to credit way above what you are actually flying. Heck, I've credited over 150 hours while managing to fly less than 90 in a month.
See my second to last sentence.
 
I don't think his degree and what he flew in the Air Force are " average" by any means.....FYI. The ones I've known ( 10) usually droned around in multi engine and some had a degree some did not.
 
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I don't think his degree and what he flew in the Air Force are " average" by any means.....FYI. The ones I've known ( 10) usually droned around in multi engine and some had a degree some did not.
I know you don't think his degree and what he flew are "average," but like we're trying to tell you, it is. That is the average military pilot. Believe it or not.

And flying the U2 is the epitome of "droning around multi engine." Just higher and in a much more uncomfortable suit. And I don't know how old you are, but a 4-year degree has been a requirement to be an AF pilot for quite some time now.
 
I don't think his degree and what he flew in the Air Force are " average" by any means.....FYI. The ones I've known ( 10) usually droned around in multi engine and some had a degree some did not.

Don't feel bad, I got the same drill when I bragged on my brother, with 2 Bachelor's degrees from MIT (Electrical Engineering, and Physics), and 2 Master's degrees, 1 from MIT (Electrical Engineereing and Computer Science), and 1 from Industrial College of the Armed forces, (National Resoursce Strategy) Distinguished graduate. He retired full Colonel after 23 years, KC-135 copilot/commander - 4 years, KC-10 copilot/commander/instructor - 3 years, Test Pilot - 4 years - received AFSC "tester of the year" award 1990. He went on to be a staff officer at the Pentagon, then division chief at Wright Patterson.
 
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Anybody actually read the article? Current pay rates at SWA for a senior Captain is $216 an hour after 12 years of service. Add 30% to that and you get $280 an hour. In round numbers a pilot cannot fly more than 1000 hours in a year so if you use that number, you go from 216,000 a year to 280,000 a year. That is based solely on salary. That does not include bonuses or any additional things that may increase pay rates. First Officers are a percentage less than that.

Soft pay is important. We work at the same joint and I just pulled up my last pay register. YTD I've flown 640hrs, but have been paid for 815hrs.

The SWA guys even have a more f'd up pay system with their trips for pay. They can can get paid north of 130TFPs if they game it.
 
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Even 200k is a tremendous amount of cash...haven't seen any engineers making anywhere close to that.

Don't know how I missed this thread, but that above made me laugh.

I counted eight engineers I know personally outside of PoA who make that number and aren't software engineers.

Four have college degrees. Only one would be considered "pedigreed", he's an RPI grad. Two their degree isn't in anything technical at all. The other four have high school diplomas only. All have been forced at one time or another to wear a manager title but only one pursued management roles. She's a girl who knew she likes to be the boss. Ha.

The thing they all have in common is they build things and fix things worth billions. And high risk projects are their staple diet, and six of them at one time or another traveled extensively to learn and hone their craft.

One pre-negotiated a severance package worth $1M and it paid out, when one of the prototypes he designed and built of a massive system the government was thinking about bidding on, died politically. Then he traveled to China and built them something similar but not quite the same from similar tech making more than double your $200,000 number. He "slowed down" by buying a large multi-state business so he didn't have to travel any more than a few hundred miles away on a regular basis. Ha.

My career is similar but I specialized in fixing and troubleshooting. I was the guy we jokingly called the "appeasement engineer". I showed up in less than 24 hours domestically to fix your telecom stuff worth millions (instead of billions) and later did similar in the data center world. I make a bit less than the above folks do and find that to be just fine. I would go when nobody else could or would. Like, get your bags and see if there's a flight out tonight kind of go.

And I backed off and stopped traveling years ago and chose to focus on smaller businesses who needed a jack-of-all-trades type of engineer to fix a lot of varied infrastructure stuff. Heck I even reprogrammed the lights in the office to come on and go off at appropriate times last year when nobody else would go get the manual and figure it out. Heh.

On paper, I have a high school diploma too. I fall into that "some college" category on surveys because I was traveling too much to finish.

High paid engineering is way more about initiative and building/fixing than sitting in an office 8-5. You gotta GO build or fix.

One of those guys above has no formal education in electronics. You should see the stuff he builds for his house, just screwing around. Fingerprint readers, integrated security system, all integrated with all the TVs and phones, he's a nut. He posts photos of "this week's" project on FB.

That's a common thread also. Such an interest in building stuff that they build regularly just for fun.

I like integrating stuff already built into strange and new things. It's subtly different than what they do. I know how to lay out a board and develop a circuit and make stuff, but it doesn't hold my interest as much as say, taking a pre-built widget and making it do something it wasn't intended to do. Different mindset. Different salary too, but not a bad one at all.

Plus for whatever reason my company kept me around when I said I wanted to take a leave of absence or resign to go play airplanes for the summer. Awfully nice of them. I still don't know why, but it feels like a pretty big pat on the back for the work done over the last couple of years. They could still decide to let me go at any time, but I'm grateful they didn't. Ironically for almost two decades getting time off was the hardest thing in my life. All of a sudden I say I'm cool with quitting and I now nearly come and go as I please. It's very weird to me.

(Obviously I went from salaried to hourly during this summer of aviation fun, so my income won't be what it was, but I'm just floored that they let me do it. I'm still technically "on-call" for anything major that breaks, but a lot of the upgrades and fixes we did over the last two years made stuff a whole lot more redundant and resilient and most of it "just runs" even when hardware breaks. Not all. Yet. But most of the really important stuff for business continuity.)
 
By 2030 most passenger carrying flights will no longer have human operators.
Fourteen years? I'll take that bet.

It makes no sense when computers can do a better job. You better believe this will happen, it will be better for the industry (by reducing the cost of a problematic unionized workforce), better for us (reduced cost will result in cheaper fares for us) and it will be safer (no alcohol/drug problem, hijacking, pilot sponsored terrorism, suicide, etc).
You really think all the infrastructure required for autonomous airline operations worldwide is going to be cheaper than paying the pilots? I'd like to see you run the numbers on that one.
 
But they might sleep at home every night which a lot of flying jobs don't.

Guess what - there are times when even that is pretty overrated ! But if that's what you want there are plenty of out and back trips to the Caribbean and Central America that would have you home each night.
 
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