So I’m looking at airline pilot central salary charts and it has the years listed on the left and the type and pay listed to the right of that. If I spend 3 years as a FO and make CA do I get 3rd year pay has CA or first year because I’ve only been a CA for a year?
Spencer,
Great question and the answer is the year associated with pay represents years is service with the airline, not time in the seat. So in your scenario you’d get 3rd year Capt pay when you upgrade.
Adam
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Thanks for the quick reply Adam, I’ve been wondering this for a long time
What is the point of listing pay for 1st year CAs? Is it possible to skip straight to CA and bypass FO?
Ben
I can only think of direct entry captains which some regionals hire. Don’t think it ever happens at the mainline carriers…
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Ben,
Airline contacts are written to cover any and all possible situations (even if they’re rare or improbable). In theory a pilot could upgrade to Capt in a year and no one wants to start negotiating pay at that point. Trust me my airline recently made some changes that were “unanticipated” by the contract. It was not fun and made for a fair amount of unhappy pilots.
Adam
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Ben,
Occasionally an airline, typically a regional, will need to hire people right into the captain position. Usually this is because a FAA or insurance requirement requires their captains to have a certain amount of flight time, say 3,000 hours. Many times there will not be enough First Officers that have this, so the airline will need to hire people that do right into the left seat, hence the need for first year Captain pay scales.
Chris
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I didn’t realize this! That’s kind of exciting.