Question for the Commercial Airline Pilots

[outrun]

Suppose someone goes from civil aviation program X to a regional/commuter airline.

(Comair/American Eagle)

The start as a FO, normally how long to go until they can get a spot as a CRJ type aircraft Captain?

At least from the pay charts I have read FO pay is scant! The huge jumps in pay are to captain with enough time in grade.In the major the wide body pilots really make the top on other end of the scale!

Assuming they were not in the military how many years would they have to wait to stand a chance joining the Majors to fly the large $$$ jets?

Do former military pilots have to start in commuter aircraft or do they get hired right into the majors? At least from speaking most Delta pilots are prior service aviators.

 

[pitzel]

I sat with a Lufthansa captain a few years back on a flight. This is what he told me.

Lufthansa hires individuals off the street, without pilots licenses, trains them to fly, and within 200-300 hours of flying time, they are in the right seat of an A320 or other similar large multi-engine passenger airplane.

What Lufthansa looks for in candidates are the soft skills, and the psychological traits that would make them highly suited to flying modern automated airplanes. They also figure that by controlling and standardizing all aspects of the flight training process, they receive a better pilot with no 'bad habits'. For example, instinctive over-use of rudders has proven to be a problem for at least one American-based operator.

But yes, some of these new CRJ captains are awfully young now, and with the expansion of the regional fleets, and seperate seniority lists, a lot of guys are ending up in the left-seats of CRJ's with under 1000 hours of cumulative time. And yes, they essentially make squat compared to Airbus FO's, even though they essentially do the same job.

BTW, as a pax, I wish the CRJ's would just go away. They cost more to fly, are slower, less comfortable, and, on some of the routes I fly, result in people being bumped off because they just don't have the capacity to lift enough weight and fuel. Especially westbound in the wintertime.

 

[kanling]

Even captains in the commuter/RJ airlines don't make much.

And the way things are going, I wouldn't count on the ultra-fat pilot salaries in the majors being around forever as the unions lose their clout.

By the way, my favorite commuter plane (pax perspective) is still the ol' Dash-8.

 

[chenobylite]

Due to the attrition/turnover rate in regionals you can expect to move to the left seat in 5-7 years. That is if you hang around or don't get furloughed. As noted, the pay isn't much but at least you're home more often. As for FO pay well, you'd better have lots saved up or you'll starve.

It's true that while most foreign air carrier train using "ab inito" US pilots come from a mix of military and GA. These days it's about a 50/50 split. Most military types tend to go straight into the majors. At least the transport category ones do as this is where being a fighter jock can be a disadvantage.

Try and log as much multi/instrument time as you can. Turbine time is even better. Right or wrong, it also helps if you're a woman or a minority.

Frankly, why anyone would get into the air carrier racket these day is beyond me. The amount of ** is and instability is overwhelming. It's a tough life compared to the old days. I've been furloughed twice in 10 years and will be happy to retire when forced out at 60.

If Scarebus built a better airplane "over use" of the rudder wouldn't be an issue. Full and abrupt use of any flight control below maneuvering speed should never result in structural failure, especially in a fly by wire system. That said, there was a deficiency in training concerning that accident.

[ October 27, 2005, 12:11 PM: Message edited by: chenobylite ]

 

[MolaKule]

Cheno,

Are you sure there being an insufficiency in training or an insufficiency in design?

 

[Terry]

Unless you are willing to give away your professional work life and work for free do not pursue a professional pilot career.

The regional jobs are horrendous with little light at the end of the tunnel.

Pay is at 40 year lows. Stability is non existent. You will never see your family. Your retirement will be stolen, you will chronically fatigued,exposed to excess radiation from flying constantly at high altitude,be a target for Islamic fundamentalists looking for a passenger carrying missle...get the idea?

Maintenance is being done on a thin dime.

And no one cares. People will pay $100 for a flight and literally risk their lives for a low fare.

Get a "real" job as a corporate raider or politician and then BUY your own plane!

Terry

 

[wavinwayne]

What is the average salary for a commercial airline pilot in the US?

 

[chenobylite]

Both. It can be looked at as a design fault that requires training although it's not totally unique to the Airbus. Airbus does have a different approach to structual design however, favoring the use of composites in critical portions of the structure.

I'm assuming the poster was refering to AA587 which went down in Nov 2001 after departing NYC. Aircrash investigations are complex affairs but among the pilot community the airframe was faulted. Of course, Airbus sees it differently.

That was the only fatal accident but after it several cracks were found in other Airbuses. Then there was Air Transat flight 961:

http://tinyurl.com/6cnwz

So the crew of AA 587 was inadequately trained about the loadings imposed by abrupt rudder reversals. However it's noteworthy that the vertical stabilzer attach points that failed were composite. One also wonders why the fly-by-wire system (which Airbus pioneered in civil airliners) allowed this to happen. This "magic" (as pilots refer to it) has also done strange things at other times.

You can read the NTSB report on AA587 here and draw your own conclusions:

http://tinyurl.com/97dxk

http://tinyurl.com/d3o63

Rudder reversals impose greater loading than a single deflection but generally speaking, pilots don't expect an airframe to shed it's vertical stab and both engines during an abrupt deflection of a control surface at or below manuevering speed. These are the rules by which fixed wing airframes are certificated.

The bottom line is if one operates the 300 series they'd better go easy with their feet...and the use of composites in critical structures needs to be engineered with care.

 

[chenobylite]

quote:

---

Originally posted by wavinwayne:
What is the average salary for a commercial airline pilot in the US?

---

It varies from starvation wages all the way to $200K plus for senior captains. It's all online, here's but one site:

http://tinyurl.com/duw42

As Terry points out, it's not the galmorous job it once was. It still has it's perks but the price paid for them is much higher these days. I'd also point out air carrier pilots have one of the higest divorce rates of all professions. Not to mention having to deal with the incredible jackassery that is the flying public.

 

[wavinwayne]

I didn't see any starvation wages on that chart. Some of those pays looked pretty darn good.

 

[pitzel]

quote:

---

Originally posted by wavinwayne:
I didn't see any starvation wages on that chart. Some of those pays looked pretty darn good.

---

Keep in mind that pilots only generally get paid when they are actually in the air. They are usually not paid for pre-flight prep, after-flight reporting, weather delays, etc., nor do they receive compensation for travel time to/from their crew hotels, which, in some cases, are located downtown, rather than near the airport. Nor do many of them receive pay for deadheading.

80 hours/month of flying is fairly prevalent standard throughout the industry. At $20-$30/hour, mandatory retirement at 60 or when health deteriorates (whichever comes first). Do the math... And by the time many of these regional commuter pilots accumulate enough time to be hired by the majors, the majors may very well not even exist anymore.

Now....if you are ambitious and go work overseas, the pay tends to be a lot better, and they aren't married so much to the disfunctional system of pilot seniority that determines payscales here.

 

[Terry]

wayvin, not enough to make it a long term career any longer. Consider too that a attorney/lawyer , surgeon/Dr. will make 3 times those wages and the Dr. usually can only kill one person at a time. I am very nervous when I fly on business any longer and wonder about the stress and proficiency of the flight crew among the various airlines. Very few can actually perform in the job or get selected. FLYING a jet is not like RIDING in a Jet. Just because you can play a video game or talk a line, it is different when you have been up all night for 14 hours and have to make a approach on instruments to a foreign airport in the mountains and 300 people are depending on you to land a 400,000lb almost out of fuel aluminum tube.

Helicopter pilots are really underpaid for their skills and are the unsung heros many times. I have flown both fixed and rotary wing aircraft and have tremendous respect for the ATP professional.

Airbus 587 report:

"rudder doublets" caused by a bizarre rudder pedal throw design ( counter intuitive) of fractions of an inch for full deflection at high speed when EVERY OTHER aircraft uses staged/limited rudder pedal movement to correspond with the actual rudder movement, a really **** poor scarebus design.

There is proof that the actual vert stab separated on 587 BEFORE the FDR cables did and remained connected and the rudder, while it was flapping back and forth during separation phase after the pilots totally lost control. I knew the pilot flying and he was a great "stick" who had been flying since 5 or 6, his Dad was a retired Eastern pilot. He was also a aerobatic pilot and had flown the Airbus for years, so he was very familiar with the aircraft.. The released reports look like whitewash to me to protect the guilty and blame the copilot. There is no training that will save you when the vert stab seperates, there is no airplane that should have the vert stab separate below 260 kts, no matter how hard you move the rudders, unless it was defective design.

 

[chenobylite]

quote:

---

Originally posted by wavinwayne:
I didn't see any starvation wages on that chart. Some of those pays looked pretty darn good.

---

What pitzel said. I know guys who made more working at Taco Bell than they did their first year at a regional.

And Terry is also right. I was trying to be diplomatic about 587 but the truth is the crew almost always takes the heat even when they're blameless. Another benefit to making the "big" bux. Sadly, there is a lot of politics involved in some of these investigations.

[ October 28, 2005, 02:53 AM: Message edited by: chenobylite ]

 

[sprintman]

Not a lot of politics, it's all politics. Look for info on the Lauda Air Boeing engine going into reverse thrust many years back tearing the aircraft to pieces in midair. It was purely the dogged determination of ex F1 pilot Niki Lauda that ensured the facts finally came out. Boeing, the engine manufacturer, the FAA, and the NTSB wanted to bury it. Sometimes the good guys do win.

 

[pitzel]

quote:

---

Originally posted by pitzel:
BTW, as a pax, I wish the CRJ's would just go away. They cost more to fly, are slower, less comfortable, and, on some of the routes I fly, result in people being bumped off because they just don't have the capacity to lift enough weight and fuel. Especially westbound in the wintertime.

---

Just an update on this: they're stopped building the dreaded CRJ :

http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2005/10/28/bombardier-051028.html

Guess the number of airlines wanting these gas guzzling, union-busting, wasteful planes with horrible economics are finally starting to dwindle.

BTW guys, sorry for touching a nerve earlier with my comment with respect to one of the upsides of foreign methods of training. I never meant for my comment to bring back painful memories, nor provoke a political discussion.

 

[MNgopher]

The article only says they are halting production of the CRJ 200, which still leaves the CRJ 400, CRJ 700 and CRJ 900's in production IIRC.

 

[flynavydiesel]

I for one am not a big AIRBUS fan, but I will say this. I was involved in an incident with a MD-9-33 where the rudder went full deflection at 330kts due to a spurious input by the rudder power pack. I was the pilot at the controls, we went up and over almost rolled the sucker. Needless to say we got it under control and landed rather uneventfully, although our rudder was out of wack.

We popped rivets on the engine mounts and wrinkled the elevator panel and the tail skin. If that had occured in an Airbus we would have been dead. Give me an over engineered MD product any day.

 

[Terry]

flynavy, we needed all the whiners about how overpaid you are in the aft end of that 3 dimensional roller coaster ride and see what they say on SUCCESSFUL landing.

Navy Training Sir !

 

[ekpolk]

quote:

---

Originally posted by flynavydiesel:
I for one am not a big AIRBUS fan, but I will say this. I was involved in an incident with a MD-9-33 where the rudder went full deflection at 330kts due to a spurious input by the rudder power pack. I was the pilot at the controls, we went up and over almost rolled the sucker. Needless to say we got it under control and landed rather uneventfully, although our rudder was out of wack.

We popped rivets on the engine mounts and wrinkled the elevator panel and the tail skin. If that had occured in an Airbus we would have been dead. Give me an over engineered MD product any day.

---

A hauntingly familiar story. One of my "favorite" flying memories is having the AFCS (automatic flight control system -- "autopilot" in plain english) go berzerk in our Prowler once. With no warning, btw. On one hand, at least we had g-suits. On the other, it's even harder, IMO, to get things back together while the suit is intermittently trying to squeeze your intestines out of your mouth. We didn't have any visible damage, but as I recall, the guys down in airframes didn't like what they saw on the g-meters. Grumman Iron Works any day, thanks.

For all the reasons Terry laid out earlier in this thread, there's a good reason I took the seps pay and headed off for law school instead of the airlines. In particular, I kinda like knowing that my job will be there next week. My next-door neighbor is a former Air Force BUFF pilot (and USAFA grad to boot), now with AA. Many of my USMC Reserve colleagues are airline guys too. I have no idea how they put up with it.