A read for all negotiating pilots - Even the Meter Reader job, which requires no education makes $70k a year!

[cdnavater]

It’s more difficult for employee without unions to obtain large pay increases, but look at how non-unionized Porter raised wages or WestJet’s compensation of wages and stock when WestJet first started and didn’t have a union.

There are also several 703 which pay $100k to $150k on King Airs without unions.

So it’s not impossible for non-unionized employees to negotiate with their owners and raise wages. It depends on the boss.
If the boss will attempt to fire you if you ask for a raise, then it might be worth it to form a union. Even small pilot groups with fewer than 30 pilots can have a union, and you don’t need to go with ALPA.

This is the new Porter Captain wages for the jet


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This is now the new minimum pay standard in upcoming negotiations for any pilots flying E170/175/190/195, CRJ200/705, Dash 8 100/300/400, ATR 42/72.

737 and Airbus pilots should be looking for even higher.

The WestJet union representatives have been clear that all 737 pilots will be paid equal across WestJet, Swoop & Sunwing. There may be differences between the company business models, but all WestJet pilots will be paid on the same scale.

The WestJet representatives have stated they are bargaining for pay aligned with the top of the industry.

Top would be $375/hour for year 1 captains and $200/hour for year 1 first officers.

Which is possible if pilots only take a few $ from each passenger ticket.

After reading this, I was left with two thoughts, you are not a pilot or this is a satirical!

The pay rates mentioned are possible to achieve. As per comments above, some carriers have already achieved or exceeded these pay rates & some carriers did triple their pilot salary in one year.

A brief summary of the process is outlined above.

It’d be interesting to know why do you think 705 regional jet and large turboprop pilots should go into their next negotiations expecting anything less than what Porter has set?

Why do you think narrow body Boeing and Airbus pilots should go into their negotiations asking for less pay than the rates already being paid to other pilots flying the same aircraft on similar routes?

Ok, when you referred to WJ starting pay as a source for demonstrating non union improving wages, you lost credibility.
They, at the time were the lowest paid 737 Captains on earth. The stock could have been worthless and it had a very drastic impact on lowering the bar.
Now, as for your 703 medevac paying 100k-150k, I guarantee they are only paying that because they have too, if the supply side shifts in their favour, it will go back to 60k overnight. You’re delusional if you think otherwise.
Yes, for the first time in history, we have some supply side leverage and I guarantee the unions will use it and of course the ticket price will have to go up to cover it.

[photofly]

Great idea. How do you measure merit in an airline pilot? On time performance? Fuel consumption? Greasing landings?

It doesn’t really matter. Anything to distinguish one pilot from another, and allow one pilot to claim they are “better” and therefore worth more than another. Do it by cleanliness of uniform if you want, anything you’re happy to compete about.

Maintaining that all pilots are of equal merit commoditizes the role.

Once there is genuine competition between pilots for roles (like engineers and lawyers and doctors) some pilots will (by merit) earn very very high salaries, and some (through lack of merit) will earn less, just like every other job. But pilots will understand that if they want to earn more they just have to outperform the pilot next to them, which is way easier than the present arrangements. That puts every pilot back in personal control of how much they earn, which is how it works in the rest of the world.

The seniority thing is just so out to lunch.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in a while, it obviously comes from someone who has no clue how the airline industry works.
Show me a company with 4000+ engineers with all different wages, pretty sure in Canada other than private practice doctors are paid the same, some will earn more through more work or more credentials but I have to be honest I don’t really know for sure.
That being said, how many managers do you hire to evaluate their cleanliness or whatever metric you’re using.
Even the small non union shops have a seniority based pay system, obviously if there was a better way, someone would have tried it already.

I think you're missing the point. 4000 engineers may indeed have a standard pay scale, but where they sit on the pay scale depends on their individual performance. Junior engineer promoted to Engineer, promoted to Senior Engineer. The better you are, the more you earn. And in the software industry it's entirely normal for superstar engineers to negotiate their own individual packages. (One of the complaints there is the disparity of pay, not the low level of pay.) But pay simply based on the date of employment? It would be inconceivable for an engineer. I cannot think of any other role other than pilot that works that way, can you?

Doctors in Ontario are paid per-procedure, but they're not employees, and their system is even more borked than pilot pay. Doctors in England are very much paid by the seniority of the position they hold, promotion on merit.

Worrying about managers is mere implementational detail. Almost every job in existence manages to have someone to evaluate how well you're doing that job, and whether you should be promoted on that basis. Why would piloting an airplane be any different?

[CanadaAir]

After reading this, I was left with two thoughts, you are not a pilot or this is a satirical!

The pay rates mentioned are possible to achieve. As per comments above, some carriers have already achieved or exceeded these pay rates & some carriers did triple their pilot salary in one year.

A brief summary of the process is outlined above.

It’d be interesting to know why do you think 705 regional jet and large turboprop pilots should go into their next negotiations expecting anything less than what Porter has set?

Why do you think narrow body Boeing and Airbus pilots should go into their negotiations asking for less pay than the rates already being paid to other pilots flying the same aircraft on similar routes?

Ok, when you referred to WJ starting pay as a source for demonstrating non union improving wages, you lost credibility.
They, at the time were the lowest paid 737 Captains on earth. The stock could have been worthless and it had a very drastic impact on lowering the bar.
Now, as for your 703 medevac paying 100k-150k, I guarantee they are only paying that because they have too, if the supply side shifts in their favour, it will go back to 60k overnight. You’re delusional if you think otherwise.
Yes, for the first time in history, we have some supply side leverage and I guarantee the unions will use it and of course the ticket price will have to go up to cover it.

IMO the total WestJet compensation package within the first 10 years of start was not dragging down wages, rather increasing them. WestJet was a strong venture and improved passenger service over what AC was doing at the time. WestJet is responsible for major strides in improving overall safety and efficiency in Canadian aviation. They did this all without a union.

Flair also has started strong, and without a union has made progress on wages and pilot quality of life. Its yet to be seen if they will keep up, and be able to safely manage their expansion. If they make the right investments in safety and their personnel, their business model will be set to succeed.

Porter has excelled without a union and managed safety well to this point.

Both ALPA and ACPA have also made gains for the industry.

Whether unionized or not, all pilots can take steps together to negotiate new conditions that are aligned with or above other industries instead of continuing to be paid below.

[CanadaAir]

For those negotiating 703 salaries, such as for a B1900, Metro, or other smaller turboprops.

This is the salary rates from the US in US dollars, you will have to convert to canadian.
$US 75k is $101k Canadian
$US 87k is $117k Canadian

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As many already know, Medevac King Air is now paying over $100k canadian.

Well wishes to those negotiating.

[digits_]

Whole seniority system is a disaster period. Merit based. Period.

Great idea. How do you measure merit in an airline pilot? On time performance? Fuel consumption? Greasing landings?

It doesn’t really matter. Anything to distinguish one pilot from another, and allow one pilot to claim they are “better” and therefore worth more than another. Do it by cleanliness of uniform if you want, anything you’re happy to compete about.

Maintaining that all pilots are of equal merit commoditizes the role.

Once there is genuine competition between pilots for roles (like engineers and lawyers and doctors) some pilots will (by merit) earn very very high salaries, and some (through lack of merit) will earn less, just like every other job. But pilots will understand that if they want to earn more they just have to outperform the pilot next to them, which is way easier than the present arrangements. That puts every pilot back in personal control of how much they earn, which is how it works in the rest of the world.

The seniority thing is just so out to lunch.

I was of the same opinion. I still think in an ideal world you're right. But I witnessed and experienced a couple of non-seniority based salary scales, and it's worse than the seniority alternative.

It's very easy to be more productive, more easy going than your fellow pilots. Just take that extra load, don't worry about duty days that much, snag the plane at the end of the day etc. Even in the best if times it is often tempting to cut corners. If you throw in the reward of getting a raise for being 'a team player', you get into a nasty area.

It does result in a situation where mediocrity is enough to advance, but on an average level, I think it does improve safety more than the individual assessments.

Of course, in great companies with outstanding managers, this would be a non issue. But it only takes one bad apple to destroy the culture. The protection of seniority based rewards and pay, ensure that people follwing the rules and bringing up issues don't get punished.

[Bede]

^excellent post

[Bede]

One of many issues the OP's argument is missing is the lack of understanding how much non monetary items contribute to the quality of a CA. It's actually surprisingly easy to get increased wage rates; what's far more difficult is securing quality of life items that management has no interest in working their way around.

[photofly]

I was of the same opinion. I still think in an ideal world you're right. But I witnessed and experienced a couple of non-seniority based salary scales, and it's worse than the seniority alternative.

It's very easy to be more productive, more easy going than your fellow pilots. Just take that extra load, don't worry about duty days that much, snag the plane at the end of the day etc. Even in the best if times it is often tempting to cut corners. If you throw in the reward of getting a raise for being 'a team player', you get into a nasty area.

It does result in a situation where mediocrity is enough to advance, but on an average level, I think it does improve safety more than the individual assessments.

Of course, in great companies with outstanding managers, this would be a non issue. But it only takes one bad apple to destroy the culture. The protection of seniority based rewards and pay, ensure that people follwing the rules and bringing up issues don't get punished.

If the possibility of earning the highest pay is the priority then the seniority system seems to me to be disadvantageous. But, if safety is more important to you than pay, then fair enough - that's your call - but bear that choice in mind when complaining about the salary.

More generally, when it comes to threads complaining about how engineers, lawyers and meter readers earn more and how that isn't fair, you need to keep in mind the different structures, risks and potentials, and not just the pay cheques.

[Bede]

The other thing to remember is that while the top end of these professions have higher remuneration, the median in many cases is lower. For example lawyers. https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/ ... n/15815/ca

[digits_]

I was of the same opinion. I still think in an ideal world you're right. But I witnessed and experienced a couple of non-seniority based salary scales, and it's worse than the seniority alternative.

It's very easy to be more productive, more easy going than your fellow pilots. Just take that extra load, don't worry about duty days that much, snag the plane at the end of the day etc. Even in the best if times it is often tempting to cut corners. If you throw in the reward of getting a raise for being 'a team player', you get into a nasty area.

It does result in a situation where mediocrity is enough to advance, but on an average level, I think it does improve safety more than the individual assessments.

Of course, in great companies with outstanding managers, this would be a non issue. But it only takes one bad apple to destroy the culture. The protection of seniority based rewards and pay, ensure that people follwing the rules and bringing up issues don't get punished.

If the possibility of earning the highest pay is the priority then the seniority system seems to me to be disadvantageous. But, if safety is more important to you than pay, then fair enough - that's your call - but bear that choice in mind when complaining about the salary.

More generally, when it comes to threads complaining about how engineers, lawyers and meter readers earn more and how that isn't fair, you need to keep in mind the different structures, risks and potentials, and not just the pay cheques.

That's the thing though. It shouldn't be my/an individual pilot's call. And it isn't. It's an industry call to base things on seniority.

A more appropriate change, while not affecting the safety too much, could be to base pay on experience level. A convoluted weighted average of relevant and irrelevant flying hours/experience.

That way a 10k hour new hire at AC would make more than a 1000 hour new hire. It would also allow pilots to be more mobile if that became the norm.

[photofly]

\
That's the thing though. It shouldn't be my/an individual pilot's call. And it isn't. It's an industry call to base things on seniority.

It's absolutely your call as to what your own preference for salary structure would be. You can't unilaterally implement your preference of course, but on those long high-altitude cruise segments when you've nothing else to do but ponder your unsatisfactory wages, it's something to think about. You're as much part of the industry as anyone else, and if enough industry pilots have a different preference, their unions can negotiate for it.

[digits_]

\
That's the thing though. It shouldn't be my/an individual pilot's call. And it isn't. It's an industry call to base things on seniority.

It's absolutely your call as to what your own preference for salary structure would be. You can't unilaterally implement your preference of course, but on those long high-altitude cruise segments when you've nothing else to do but ponder your unsatisfactory wages, it's something to think about. You're as much part of the industry as anyone else, and if enough industry pilots have a different preference, their unions can negotiate for it.

Even if the majority of pilots say 'we want a salary structure that encourages cutting corners', it should *not* materialize. I hope most pilots don't want that. Some management teams sure would love it!

[photofly]

Even if the majority of pilots say 'we want a salary structure that encourages cutting corners', it should *not* materialize. I hope most pilots don't want that. Some management teams sure would love it!

What if a majority of pilots say "we want a salary structure that recognizes our different levels of talent - and one where we can differentiate ourselves from our peers to earn more money"?

[digits_]

Even if the majority of pilots say 'we want a salary structure that encourages cutting corners', it should *not* materialize. I hope most pilots don't want that. Some management teams sure would love it!

What if a majority of pilots say "we want a salary structure that recognizes our different levels of talent - and one where we can differentiate ourselves from our peers to earn more money"?

If that can be done without cutting corners: great!

I don't believe it can be done on a big scale without encouraging undesired behaviour.

[photofly]

Even if the majority of pilots say 'we want a salary structure that encourages cutting corners', it should *not* materialize. I hope most pilots don't want that. Some management teams sure would love it!

What if a majority of pilots say "we want a salary structure that recognizes our different levels of talent - and one where we can differentiate ourselves from our peers to earn more money"?

If that can be done without cutting corners: great!

I don't believe it can be done on a big scale without encouraging undesired behaviour.

It would start with someone like you believing that it could be done, and figuring out how...

[cdnavater]

Even if the majority of pilots say 'we want a salary structure that encourages cutting corners', it should *not* materialize. I hope most pilots don't want that. Some management teams sure would love it!

What if a majority of pilots say "we want a salary structure that recognizes our different levels of talent - and one where we can differentiate ourselves from our peers to earn more money"?

Photofly,
Your opinion on this reeks of ignorance, you really come across as someone who hasn’t worked for a commercial operation, most certainly not in the airline industry.
The one good idea I absolutely agree with is starting pay commensurate with experience, if you come with a bare ATPL, you start at year one. For every 1000 hours PIC or 1500 SIC, you move up one year on the scale.
We already have a means of making more, it’s called an upgrade and not all can achieve that. Some are not successful, some won’t try, they prefer the lack of responsibility and choose to stay FO.
We used to have a performance based bonus system and it encouraged cutting corners, they called it OTP. To be fare though it was shared among all employee groups, so one could not outperform others and gain more but my point was, some pilots were so stressed out about being on time they would miss things or short cut, I witnessed this personally. I would routinely say in the crew briefing that I don’t care about OTP, safety first and if we are on time that’s a bonus.
Interestingly though, the biggest share of the on time bonus went to the people who had absolutely nothing to do with it, the executive suite.
Everything negative said here about pay for for performance is true, it encourages bad behaviour.
The other thing, every single person who has said the seniority system sucks, usually doesn’t have any and when asked what do we replace it with, they cannot concisely say with what.
WJ would be a great study for performance based pay, not individually but as a group and some of the stories from the early days of profit share are scary!
If you really think something like this could work, do a presentation, break it all down how it would work. Hint, using a clean uniform as a metric is ridiculous, 95% of airline pilots are equal in skill and competence, there is always 5% of any group.
But just to reiterate, I fully support an increase in starting pay for experienced pilots over and above the inexperienced ones.

[digits_]

What if a majority of pilots say "we want a salary structure that recognizes our different levels of talent - and one where we can differentiate ourselves from our peers to earn more money"?

If that can be done without cutting corners: great!

I don't believe it can be done on a big scale without encouraging undesired behaviour.

It would start with someone like you believing that it could be done, and figuring out how...

I don't see how it would be possible. That's he point I'm trying to make.

If both the pilot, and the manager who is supposed to keep the pilot in check, are encouraged to skirt regulations (for higher wages and higher company efficiency), especially now with the SMS program that is being governed by that same management team, then how do you expect anyone to apply the rules consistently?

Furthermore, if one company starts acting like that, the others will have not much choice to follow, in order to stay competitive in their prices.
We've finally reached a bit of a culture shift where most companies are getting rid of that attitude, and where more and more pilots are unwilling to cut corners. Let's not undo that by adding financial incentive for breaking the rules.

[photofly]

If that can be done without cutting corners: great!

I don't believe it can be done on a big scale without encouraging undesired behaviour.

It would start with someone like you believing that it could be done, and figuring out how...

I don't see how it would be possible. That's he point I'm trying to make..

Then I guess you’ll have to wait for someone who does see how it’s possible to turn up.

[digits_]

It would start with someone like you believing that it could be done, and figuring out how...

I don't see how it would be possible. That's he point I'm trying to make..

Then I guess you’ll have to wait for someone who does see how it’s possible to turn up.

I've heard good things about Godot.

[jakeandelwood]

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Dash 8 versus garbage truck

[CanadaAir]

The post above comes out to almost $70k annually for the garbage truck drivers, $33/hr x 40 hr a week x 52 weeks/year = $69k

Where has ALPA been over the past 20 years?
Sleeping?

Most union pilots are paying union dues of over $1000+ a year.
For large pilot groups such as WestJet, Jazz, Encore, Transat - ALPA is getting over a $million or several million a year from each group.
Total pilot dues to ALPA from across all the Canadian ALPA carriers must be close to $10 million a year.

Why isn't ALPA able to get all it's pilots, First Officers and Captains, wages which are at least better than a garbage man?

What kind of union has ALPA become?

The Anything Less Pilots Accept (ALPA) union.

It's incredibly frustrating to see ALPA become like this from where it started.

[CanadaAir]

ALPA is now negotiating for Perimeter/Bearskin.

Where is ALPA national to help them out?

ALPA never should accept pay rates less than garbage truck drivers.

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Perimeter/Bearskin 703/4 wage rates from current collective agreement:

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This is what US companies are paying Metro Captains in USD - starting at $US 87k or $103k Canadian:
Where's ALPA to help Perimeter and Bearskin pilots get these rates, or at least the $70k of the garbage truck driver and meter reader?

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[CanadaAir]

Here's another sleepy ALPA group. Would have expected better since their Exchange Income Corp owners are raking in half a billion in revenue in a single quarter and their pilots have been with ALPA many years.

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Since Calm Air is flying ATR72, their pilots should be aiming for the similar size pay of the Q400 pilots at Horizon Air (in US dollars, $US 90 first year First Officer is $121 Canadian, $US 149 first year Captain is $200 Canadian):

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ALPA could at least get FOs a garbage truck driver $70k

[newlygrounded]

Screenshot_20230219-095553.pngScreenshot_20230209-002112.pngDash 8 versus garbage truck

Pilots getting scammed hard core, garbage truck guy is PAID for his "pre flight" and for his daily route planning as well.

[CanadaAir]

Horizon Air also has a program where they help pay for your training

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Instead of developing a similar program and investing to retain its current pilots, EIC is complaining to the CBC they can't fly due to a pilot shortage.
A shame to see all these once long term employers - Bearskin, Perimeter, Calm air go down the toilet due to poor management

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