THE PILOT NETWORK Quarterly – Spring 2019

IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE ON PAGE 5 ON PAGE 26 ON PAGE 32

Finding your next gig A TPN snapshot from Emet -vs- Cheapshot, The Four P’s
Jet Blue or Southwest Adam and Matt a conversation recruiters look for
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In this issue
05 . . . A Snaphot of the Pilot Network
07 . . . Introducing High Country Air Service
08 . . . Jet Out-Of-The-Blue
13 . . . Creating UpgradeStay: Evolution
of an Idea
14 . . . A 100 Knot Tailwind, with Continuous
Light Chop - Occasional Moderate
22 . . . Why Southwest?
26 . . . Careful What You Ass-U-Me
32 . . . The 4 P’s
35 . . . Variable Speed... for Your Sanity

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A Snaphot of the Pilot Network

I am reminded that summer is just
around the corner. BBQs, kids off of
school, a great time to go flying...all-in-all
it is time that we all love and look forward
too. As quickly as summer will get here, it
will depart us just as fast. The bid-months
will seem like minutes.

While we enjoy our summer fun here at

TPN HQ, we also know that in just about
six months TPNx will be upon us. That is
right folks, November 9th-11th is the
second iteration of TPNx! Matt and I have
started the planning process to make
a more expansive and comprehensive
experience. We are beyond excited
to continue to grow and evolve the
Network and all that comes with it,
especially TPNx. We have really started to
expand some of the ideas that TPN was
founded upon and hope to incorporate
them into TPNx this year. With a lot of
hard work, some expert Networking (see
what I did there?), and a little bit of luck
we will have some amazing new features
across TPN’s ecosystem.

One of the new ideas brought up by

a few different members is ‘what do I
do after I retire?’ For as many new hires
that are about to show up on property,
there are that many pilots about to retire.
Anecdotally, the word on the street is
many of them would still enjoy flying in
an organized some capacity. Whether
it is professionally, for non-profit work,
instructing...we want to explore these
different ideas and see how the Network
can get involved. If you have an idea
or are actively doing a great retirement
gig, let us know about it! We want to
feature you and your work in TPNQ or
on the podcast. Hit us up at heyguys@
thepilotnetwork.org or https://www.
facebook.com/ThePilotNetwork.org/. We
can’t wait to see what is out there...

I am still amazed at what The Pilot

Network has become. It is comforting
and awesome to know that so many
aviation professionals routinely come
together to support one another. It is
our honor to curate your collective
knowledge base and get to call ourselves
part of TPN. Thank you all and fly safe!

Adam Uhan
The Pilot Network

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left  PA-18 SuperCub and
two happy students on a
Knik River gravel bar near
Palmer, AK, 23AUG10
Introducing High
Country Air Service
High Country Air Service LLC is a New Mexico-based, service-disabled
veteran-owned small business by Dave Jesurun, High Country Air Service
On a contract trip last fall, I experienced a
pressurization malfunction in my client’s single-
engine turboprop while climbing through
9,000’ MSL on our return flight from KCOS to
KSAF. Having flown up and down the southern
Rockies extensively in unpressurized piston
planes during my previous 18 months with
Honeywell, the “way out” was obvious even
though we were vertically “stuck” at 12,000 MSL.
I visually ID’d La Veta pass, we cancelled IFR,
crossed the pass to enter the valley that runs
down to Santa Fe, and safely RTB’d.
Like everyone says about every IFE, training
just took over and...I just did it.What wasn’t
obvious to me at the time was the fact that I
had the knowledge and experience to handle
that particular IFE. It occurred to me on my
drive back to ABQ that there are thousands of
experienced aviators that don’t have that same
experience. Just because you have flown a
C-130 in combat or strafed the enemy in your
F-16...does not necessarily mean that you have
the skills yet to handle a box canyon in rapidly
deteriorating WX or landing your brand new
Piper Cherokee at 8,000’+ density altitude at
max crosswind. High Country Air Service exists
to provide you the training and skills you need
in these environments. As professional aviators,
we know that skill comes from preparation and
practice. That’s what we deliver for you...and we
do it in some of the most austere--and visually
rewarding--places in the CONUS.
A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to
fly SuperCubs in Alaska with my good friend,
Grant “Notso” Sharpe. We earned our tailwheel
endorsements as part of Alaska’s Cub Training
Specialist’s (ACTS) bush/mountain flying course
and were forever changed by the experience.
Clark “Jay” Baldwin, a retired ANG F-106/F-16
pilot and Delta pilot, put on an amazing course
and in the process showed me something I
wasn’t even aware I was looking for--precision
flying outside the military. Before I took Jay’s
course, I thought I’d go to law school after I
retired. After I took his course, I knew I needed
to pursue bush flying. As fate would have it, the
Air Force sent me to Cannon on my last assign-
ment in 2014 and I found bush flying skills
to be as handy in New Mexico as they are in
Alaska. Not all the flying we do at High Country
Air Service (HCAS) is in the backcountry, but
the same attention to detail that is so essential
there, serves us well elsewhere.
In 2016, I accepted an offer from Honeywell to
serve as the Chief Test Pilot for their Flight Test
department in Albuquerque. In addition to
flight testing prototype avionics, I also got to
fly all over New Mexico and the Southwest in a
wide variety of general aviation (GA) airplanes. I
Not all of our clients are pilots, but we serve
them all as if they are.
flew Cessna 182s, Beech Bonanzas, Barons, and
King Airs, as well as a Piper Malibu and a Cessna
Citation V. This diverse experience serves as
the foundation on which I built High Country
Air and it has paid some fantastic operational
dividends, like my unplanned VFR mountain
flight last fall.
In August 2018, I left Honeywell to run my
company full-time. High Country Air Service
LLC is a New Mexico-based, service-disabled
the pilot network
veteran-owned small business. We are a multi-
disciplinary aviation services firm, offering
aircraft/fleet management, contract pilot ser-
vices, flight testing, backcountry and mountain
flight instruction, ferry flights, and consulting
to businesses, individuals, and government
agencies who require the highest levels of
quality and safety. That’s a whole lot of words
to say that HCAS is a pilot’s company, founded
by and serving pilots. Not all of our clients are
pilots, but we serve them all as if they are. If you
entrust us with your plane, we’re going to fly
and care for it like its our own. We offer aviation
services and advanced GA training with the
same integrity and flight discipline the Air Force
instilled in me over 24 years.
I’m excited for what the future holds for High
Country Air. We recently negotiated a forma-
tion training services agreement with a major
aircraft manufacturer and are working on
establishing local flightseeing operations. These
activities will round out our current suite of
service offerings, complement the backcountry
instruction we already provide in our mountain
flying courses, and serve as a stepping stone for
our next phase, Part 135 backcountry charter
ops--but that’s a story for another day!
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the pilot network
Jet Out-Of-The-Blue
JetBlue has the potential to make a great new home if you’re looking for
an airline job By Jason Depew, TPN staff writer
I recently flew a leg with a jumpseater from
JetBlue. I always enjoy having jumpseaters from
other airlines because a flight deck seems to
act as a sort of neutral territory for very interest-
ing discussions about our industry, and this
case didn’t disappoint. By correlating some of
the things we’ve discussed with some publicly
available facts, I feel like JetBlue has the poten-
tial to make a great new home if you’re looking
for an airline job. Let’s take a look.
Our conversation started by noting that
JetBlue’s union (ALPA) and their company have
reached an Agreement in Principle. This is good
news and we were all excited to hear the results.
For those who are as uneducated on unions
and airline contracts as I was a few years
ago, airline pilot contracts are enacted with
an “amendable” date. You can almost think of
this as an expiration date...an agreed-upon
time when the company and the pilot group
plan to meet to talk about revising their con-
tract...usually about 4-5 years in the future.
Negotiations usually start before the amend-
able date, with hopes of signing before the old
contract “expires.” As long as the company and
the economy are healthy, this usually means
pay rates go up. However, these negotiations
also involve parts of the contract that are more
important than pay charts. The union pushes
for better “work rules” - things that yield better
quality of life for the pilots. Imagine if Army
helicopter pilots had the ability to negotiate air-
conditioned hangars to be used for preflighting
of all aircraft while deployed, or AMC pilots had
the ability to negotiate better minimum rest
times with TACC. Since I lean libertarian, I have
very complicated feelings about unions in gen-
eral. However, there’s no debate that, as a pilot,
airline unions have the power to make our lives
better a lot better in many ways. (I guess I’ll wal-
low in my hypocrisy as long as it benefits me.)
An Agreement in Principle (AIP) is the first step
to the end of new contract negotiations. It
8    the pilot network
means that, after a lot of back-and-forth, both
sides finally feel like they have a workable
agreement. These negotiations are conducted
by a committee, assigned/hired by the union.
That committee writes up the details of the AIP
and takes it to the union leadership (called a
Master Executive Council, or MEC at ALPA.) The
MEC pours over the AIP and votes on whether
they accept it and want to present the agree-
ment to the union members (the pilots.)
If the AIP is approved, the union will translate
the Negotiating Committee’s AIP into contract-
style language. Lawyers are involved...it’s a very
dirty process. The resulting document is called a
Tentative Agreement, or TA. After the company
You may not have been considering JetBlue
as one of your top companies to work for,
but I think that may need to change.
double-checks that the TA matches the AIP, the
union leadership presents it to the members.
The members vote, and if it’s approved the
TA will become their new contract (or Pilot
Working Agreement) on the specified date.
If not, negotiations resume until a new AIP
is reached.
JetBlue’s contract negotiations hadn’t been
going well by all accounts. There was a lot of
talk about strike. The sudden arrival of this AIP is
great news. Although all airline pilots must be
prepared to strike during negotiations, they all
know that it’s a miserable process.
Thanks for the lesson Emet. How does this
affect me?
Well, you may not have been considering
JetBlue as one of your top companies to work
for, but I think that may need to change.
I don’t blame you if you haven’t even consid-
ered applying to JetBlue in the past. Their pay
rates have been...let’s be nice and say “uncom-
petitive”...for a long time. First year pay is $53/
hr, and their highest top pay rate (12+ years
as A321 Captain) is only $219/hr. They’ve used
a strategy similar to Southwest, Virgin, Alaska,
and others...basically only flying one type of
aircraft. This is a great strategy for reducing
maintenance and logistical issues and minimiz-
ing training costs. However, for pilots it means
that you’re never going to make big bucks or
fly across oceans on a widebody jet. (Yes, yes,
they aren’t a true single-type company because
they do have a fleet of E190s. However, that
doesn’t help the case of them giving pilots
more interesting flying or higher pay. Sure, you
could get to captain sooner on the E190, but
between pay and types of flying, it was almost
halfway back down to being a regional airline
captain...a direction most of us aren’t looking to
go.) They’re also very much an east-coast airline
with only 1 of their 5 bases being located on
the west coast (in Long Beach, CA.)
So: domestic narrowbody flying at industry
lagging pay rates, with most bases on the east
coast. I get why they may not have been attrac-
tive to you.
That said, JetBlue has several interesting things
going for them. For many pilots, JetBlue’s based
could be very attractive. If that’s the case for
you, this company could be a great opportunity.
Let’s take a look:

First off, their pay is going up. I got an unofficial
look at the proposal for their new pay charts
and they look good. At this point, you basically
have to assume that they’re going to match
the rates offered by similarly-structured airlines.
Right now Southwest pilots start at $79/hr, and
top out at $258/hr. Top Captains at Alaska hit
$259/hr. The pay at JetBlue will have to be in
that range. Whether the company likes it or
not, that’s the bare minimum for this type of
airline to remain competitive in attracting pilots
right now.
So, JetBlue is probably going to be on par with
competitors like Southwest and Alaska for pay.
Not bad.
Another interesting rumor is that JetBlue’s AIP
includes pay rates for the Bombardier CS100.
It’s no secret that JetBlue is looking to upgrade
its fleet of 60 Embraer E190s. They’ve been
looking at both the E190-E2, and the CS100. No
matter which one they choose, it makes sense
for them to take advantage of new technology
to operate more efficiently. Both will be good
aircraft (though as a pilot at a company with 75
CS100s on order, I’m partial to Bombardier’s jet.)
The CS100 will have to pay better than the cur-
rent E190 rates because it’s a far more capable
jet that will generate a lot more money for the
company. Though it’d eventually replace the
older E190s, it would take several years to make
that transition. Adding those new aircraft would
increase opportunity for movement and cap-
tain upgrades in the company in the near-term.
JetBlue isn’t the biggest airline out there, so you
may be wondering how they have the money
to buy a bunch of new aircraft. It turns out, that
they’re in outstanding financial shape. JetBlue
made $1.1B in profit last year, and they only
have $1.3 billion in debt. Worst case, one year
of profits could basically cover all their liabilities.
That’d never happen though because they’re
also sitting on $4B in cash! They’ve blended
a strategy of being a lower-cost airline, with a
culture that people like, an industry-leading
domestic premium cabin (see TPG’s glowing
praise,) and focused on a small number of very
smart hubs to build an airline that makes a
lotof money.
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Some airlines, like United, have been faltering in
the domestic market for a while and are play-
ing catch-up by buying a bunch of B737-700s...
er B737MAXes, and (expensive to operate)
CRJ200s. JetBlue made about half as much as
United last year, but it did so more efficiently...
it only owns about 1/3 as many aircraft. It also
has $4B in cash and has only 1/10th as much
debt! JetBlue has been focusing on markets
neglected by other players and it’s been paying
off! If (or more likely when) we go through our
next economic downturn, I really like JetBlue’s
financial position.
It’s also worth noting that JetBlue isn’t just
spending their money on increased pilot pay
and smaller jets. They’re also keeping the top
end of their Airbus fleet fresh. They’re ordering
the new A321LR, a 4000-mile jet with seats for
up to 240 passengers. Southwest made the
news recently announcing they’re going to
Hawaii, which is nice. JetBlue will be going to
Europe, and that will be an even bigger deal.
(They’ll also be capable of doing Hawaii out of
Long Beach, if they so choose.) If you go with
JetBlue, you will probably end up with options
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for meaningful international flying in the future.
It’ll be a tough market, competing with low-
cost carriers flying the B737MAX and A321LR,
but JetBlue has been succeeding by offering
superior service against similar aircraft in the US.
I suspect they’ll be competitive internationally
as well.
So, JetBlue will pay well, they’ll have an even
nicer fleet, they have outstanding finances, and
they’re going to have opportunities for interna-
tional flying. Why else might you be interested
in flying for them?
JetBlue has put a lot of effort into making
themselves a powerhouse in New York, a place
where there is always money for any airline
willing to work hard. They’re strong in Boston,
a huge market without as many big players as
NYC. (American has a hub there, but it’s one of
tenhubs in the company...and no other major
airlines have hubs there at all.) JetBlue’s other
hubs are Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and Long
Beach...all powerhouse markets that also don’t
get as much attention from the majors. These
are all smart strategic positions, but they also
happen to be nice places to live if you like
those areas.
I’ve repeatedly made the casethat location
should be most important when choosing the
airline you work for. If you’re from anywhere
in the northeast, Florida, or California, JetBlue
could be a great option that hasn’t been able
to hire as competitively lately. This might be a
great time to lock in a job at a local airline with
lots of potential.
JetBlue’s Mint cabin is an outstanding product
that people can’t get enough of. It’s important
to realize their customers are extremely loyal.
They’re fans of the culture, and they like the air-
craft. They have a strong following in the areas
they serve, and they’ll be able to use that to
expand. This means more money as a company,
and better job security as a pilot.
JetBlue has had a tougher time attracting pilots
lately because of their weak pay rates and fleet
makeup. That means they are a very unique
opportunity for the next few years. They’re
eager for pilots like you, and things are only
going to get better at the company. If you’re
considering a Regional Airline Touch & Go, I feel
like you should also apply to JetBlue, as long as
the locations make sense. You’ll get better pay
to potentially fly bigger jets at great bases.
While this is a great opportunity for a military
or high-time regional pilot to get into big
airline flying big aircraft for real pay, JetBlue is
also innovating to make themselves attractive
10    the pilot network
for younger pilots. They have several Gateway
Programsdesigned to help you start an airline
career with them. These programs offer to take
you from a zero-time pedestrian to an airline
plot in as little as 4 years. That’s impressive, but
the big benefit of these programs is that when
you interview (with as few as zero hours) you
get hired by JetBlue. You know from day one
that you’ll have a job waiting for you as soon as
you meet eligibility requirements. They’ll help
you secure funding for flight training and find-
ing a job to build the time you need to get your
1500 hours and ATP. (They have a partnership
with CAE for you to do flight instruction, and
they have a sort of farm-team airline, Cape Air,
where you can build time flying multi-engine
aircraft for an air carrier. It’s challenging, often
single-pilot flying, but if you don’t want to
spend 1200 hours instructing to build time, it’s
a good option.)
With a Gateway Program, once you meet their
requirements you start flying for JetBlue. I’ve
already shown what I believe to be a compel-
ling argument that it’s a great company with
lots of potential. After you’ve completed any
obligations to JetBlue, you’ll have the option to
apply elsewhere...and a resume that makes you
competitive for those jobs.
Before we finish this discussion, I want to take
a moment for some fun speculation. This is
probably meaningless conjecture, but please
join me on a quick dive down the rabbit hole
anyway. Warren Buffett made the news recently
when he suggested that he might be interested
in buying an entire airline. The news media says
that would have to be Southwest, but I say: why
not JetBlue? Their financials should make them
extremely attractive to an investor, and they
have room to grow if backed by some extra
capital. Would JetBlue be an even better place
to work if the master of American investing
owned them? I can’t say for sure, but I doubt
that it’d be worse.
Individual billionaires aside, what about other
potential deals involving Jetblue? Alaska and
Virginare working their way through our indus-
try’s most recent merger. It’s a bit of an odd
marriage, but both are strong companies. With
this deal, they’ve both drastically expanded
their network and become a much larger,
nationwide airline. What if that deal worked
out very well and they decided to go even
bigger? An Alaska/Virgin + JetBlue deal could
truly turn a larger, combined company into a
powerhouse. They’d have even better coverage
and they’d be able to solidify a brand of pre-
mium domestic service while expanding into
international operations. This new airline would
be large enough to go toe-to-toe with the four
largest passenger airlines in the country. While
this is the merger that makes the most sense
to me, there are other options out there too.
JetBlue could take the lead in a merger with
other companies...Spirit and Frontier are other
all-Airbus companies with growing networks.
There are several scenarios where a JetBlue
merger gets very interesting.
Again, please understand that this is pure spec-
ulation. I would not buy JetBlue stock or apply
for a job there expecting one of these scenarios
to happen. However, if any scenario along those
lines does play out, the pilots already working
at JetBlue will be in an incredible position.
Thanks for bearing with me...I’ll end my specula-
tions there and get back to the point:
If you’re not sure whether you can get to a
Legacy carrier right now, or you’re not sure you
want to work for one of them, I think JetBlue is
a unique opportunity. They’ve had a hard time
attracting pilots because of pay, but that will be
fixed within months thanks to a new contract.
For a military pilot, a high-time regional pilot, or
a low-time pilot who needs a bit of a guarantee
before jumping into this industry with both feet,
JetBlue needs you and is looking to hire. They’re
standing on solid financial ground, and they’re
in the process of improving an already great
fleet. They’re a domestic airline, but they’re
going to give pilots opportunities for interna-
tional flying in the future.
If nothing else, try working for them as if it’s a
regional airline touch & go. Worst case, you move
on when a Legacy carrier calls...though I can
see a lot of reasons why you might fall in love
with JetBlue and just decide to stick around.
Since location should always be your #1 priority
in choosing an airline to work for, I say that if
you want to live near Boston, New York, central
Florida, or Long Beach, JetBlue should be one of
the airlines at the top of your list.
PROFESSIONAL AVIATION SERVICES FOR THE DISCERNING AIRCRAFT OWNER
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HIGHCOUNTRYAIRSERVICE.COM | 1.800.416.5042

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Creating UpgradeStay
Evolution of an Idea by Justin Wieland
UpgradeStay is the first service offering shared
hotel stays to pilots and flight attendants as an
alternative to crash pads. While our business
model and operations are new and innovative,
our mission is simple: we aim to help aircrew
commuters find a restful place to sleep at an
affordable price. By negotiating long term con-
tracts with hotels and pairing aircrew to share
a room, we are able to offer high-quality hotel
stays at half the market rates.
IDEA #1: BUILD A BETTER CRASH PAD
The original idea for UpgradeStay sparked in
my mind after reading a New York Times article
entitled Dorm Living for Grown Ups about a
new and extremely successful real estate devel-
opment in San Francisco offering high-quality
dorm-style apartments to young professionals
in urban areas. I had flown F-15’s in the Air Force,
and many of my friends in aviation were transi-
tioning from military service to airline careers, so
I was well aware of the crash pad phenomenon.
It seemed like there was an opportunity to
develop high-quality communal lodging near
commercial airports targeted at commuting
pilots as an alternative to crowded unkempt
crash pads. My belief in the need for such a
business was strengthened when I met my
Co-Founder Chloe Zahara, a flight attendant at
United Airlines. Chloe had owned and operated
her own crash pad in SFO for three years, knew
all about the housing challenges for aircrew, and
Our ultimate objective at UpgradeStay is to help
pilots and flight attendants get better sleep.
educated me on the fact that flight attendants
needed additional housing options as much, if
not more than, pilots themselves. We worked
together researching the concept for a few
months when it dawned on us: a higher-quality
crash pad wasn’t the answer. We needed some-
thing truly innovative to help early career pilots
and flight attendants afford restful sleeping
quarters fit for adult professionals.
IDEA #2: ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR CRASH PADS
The business we created began with this under-
standing: aviation professionals are happy to
share, but they can’t get good rest when sharing
with 15 other people crammed in a room full of
bunk beds. Our new idea was to create a market
for aircrew to split the cost of a hotel room and
share with just one other crew member. On
top of a better sleep solution, the idea made
financial sense: Chloe had observed that most
renters in her SFO crash pad needed a bed 4-6
times a month. That number of half-price hotel
rooms would cost about the same as the aver-
age crash pad monthly rent of $350 - $450. After
deciding that this was the best way to move
forward, we built a website, partnered with the
SFO DoubleTree, and launched UpgradeStay a
month later! Since that time, we have expanded
to LAX and are currently refining our operations
and technology. By the end of 2019, we intend
to expand nationwide.
BETTER SLEEP, SAFER FLYING
Our ultimate objective at UpgradeStay is to help
pilots and flight attendants get better sleep. This
is a goal that we feel can improve not only the
quality of life for aircrew but also the safety of the
traveling public.
While many pilots use crash pads as a sleep
solution, others resort to brief naps in the crew
room or even sleeping there overnight despite
many airlines’ policies prohibiting the practice.
In 2009, a Colgan Air pilot was observed sleep-
ing in the crew lounge at Newark International
Airport on the night before he crashed his aircraft
upon approach to Buffalo, New York, killing all
49 people on board. The NTSB cited pilot error
and fatigue as contributing factors in the crash.
In their final safety report on this incident, the
the pilot network
NTSB recommended several changes the air-
lines could make to improve flight safety. These
included providing crew housing or helping
commuting crew find affordable lodging in
their base cities. With our new venture, we hope
that the lower cost of an UpgradeStay room
will encourage more aviators to choose a full
night’s rest in a comfortable, quiet hotel room
over other options that may compromise quality
sleep.
BUILDING TRUST: A FORMULA FOR SUCCESS
In order to build a community of aircrew that
uses UpgradeStay as a primary lodging solution,
we know it is imperative to build trust. In my
view, the formula below is a universal method of
doing just that:
Trust = (Integrity + Competence) * Time
Integrity means doing what we say we are
going to do; competence means being capable
of fulfilling our promises to our members and
time means repeating this over and over and
over. Great companies engender trust by dem-
onstrates integrity and competence repeatedly
throughout the years.
While trust can take years to build, it starts with
a first impression. We are reaching out to the
Pilot Network to introduce ourselves to avia-
tors around the country, and hope you will try
our service and tell your friends about your
experience. You can visit our website to see tes-
timonials from other pilots and save big on our
first stay with a 25% discount by using the code
PN25 at checkout.
To learn more about our services and see what
other pilots have to say about us, please check us
out at UpgradeStay.com.
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the pilot network
A 100 Knot Tailwind, with
Continuous Light Chop...
Occasional Moderate
Landing a job at a major airline is a lifetime-level
achievement by Jason Depew, TPN Staff Writer
I know what you’re thinking...this is a Delta guy’s primer on
how to start every radio call to ATC. That’d be a waste of time
here though. My company spends the entirety of the first 7
hours of Indoc on “chop reporting procedures” and you can’t
get an employee ID or a parking pass until you demonstrate
proficiency. We’re here to discuss something more universal.
Specifically:
Landing a job at a major airline is a lifetime-level achieve-
ment. It’s like winning the lottery. If you live intelligently, this
job will give you more time than ever with your family, while
setting you up for financial freedom. This job is something to
be thankful for and taken advantage of (in the best possible
connotation)! It’s not something to cast aside lightly.
This job is the 100kt tailwind in the title of this article.
Would you give up that boost to avoid a little chop? Hell
no! Personally, I’d need to be taking a pretty decent beat-
ing before giving up a tailwind that good...especially if it’s
leg 3 or 4 of the day and I’m headed to a good layover. So,
how does this analogy play out for airline jobs? We have to
ask ourselves:
Is it okay to leave a job at one major airline for a job at a dif-
ferent company? If so, at what point is the loss of money or
seniority out-weighted by the benefits of making the switch?
In Part 2 of “Give a Hoot, Don’t Commute of my argument
against commuting I said:
“In our industry, seniority is everything. We hate the idea of
moving from one company to another and ‘losing’ a bunch
of seniority in the process. I wouldn’t do this on a whim;
however, I assert that there’s nothing wrong with giving up a
14    the pilot network
good job at a good company if you have a confirmed job at
a new good company in a place your entire family will enjoy
without you having to commute.”
This doesn’t have to just be about commuting though. I am
shocked at how many pilots I know who adopt the philoso-
phy of, “I’m going to apply to all the major airlines and go
with the first one that calls.”
An airline career is probably 20-30 years long. That’s as long
as many marriages! Would you even consider “I’m going to
propose to a few different people and marry the first one
who says ‘Yes?’” Talk about a recipe for disaster! I don’t recom-
mend approaching marriage or an airline job hunt from a
position of desperation.
Still, we have to account for some practicality here. If you
want to fly for a major airline, you have to commit to leaving
the regionals or the military at some point. It gets increas-
ingly difficult to go back the further you get from this point.
I don’t think many of us would spend much time debating
between letting our kids go hungry and working at an
airline that isn’t our #1 choice.
However, if you can get hired by one major airline, you’re
probably competitive at the others. In fact, by completing
training and getting experience as a Part 121 airline pilot
flying a big jet, you’re making yourself more competitive for
jobs at those other airlines every day. If you’d rather be at
another airline, there’s no reason to not keep your applica-
tion for that company updated and live.
Maybe you decide you don’t like passengers and you’d rather
fly boxes. Maybe you decide that you don’t love domestic

stuff and you want to maximize your chances
of long-haul international flying. Maybe you
just decide that your company’s culture or work
rules just aren’t for you. Or, as we’ve already
mentioned, maybe you’re commuting at your
current company, but could end that commute
forever by working for a different airline. These
are all valid reasons to consider a move.
This probably sounds like a longshot to you
because it’s not common. Just because it isn’t
common doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen
though! There was a United pilot in my Indoc
class at Delta. I got assigned to mentor a Delta
new hire who ended up going to another
company. A friend of mine had training dates
at Delta, but now flies for Southwest. I’ve heard
many stories of people not showing up at train-
ing at almost every major airline because they
ended up taking a better offer elsewhere.
The biggest barrier to this mindset is the senior-
ity system. In most other industries, your pay
and benefits are negotiated during the hiring
process. In theory, they are based on your skills
and experience...the mythical meritocracy.
There’s a fascinating school of thought right
now that says you can maximize your lifetime
income by changing jobs every two years or
less. Airlines don’t work that way.
I get a lot of email/PM inquiries from TPN
members on this topic. One military aviator
recently asked me how bids for base and air-
craft changes are awarded in the airlines. “Are
they merit-based?” My answer, after I stopped
chuckling, was “Almost nothing in this industry
is merit-based.” Almost everything that mat-
ters about your career depends on when you
started working at your airline, how many active
pilots started working there before you, and (to
a lesser extent) how many active pilots started
working there after you. You’re welcome to bid
for whatever you want, but you won’t get it
until everyone ahead of (senior to) you has had
their pick.
To some pilots, this will be demoralizing. If
you are a competent, hard-working, effective
person (or just a champion suck-up) you may
be used to getting good deals ahead of more
senior peers. However, I like the seniority sys-
tem. It’s based on cold, simple math. It can’t be
cheated. I’ve seen too many systems purporting
to be merit-based while they promote people
for reasons other than merit...or for having
the pilot network
“merit” in all the wrong areas. (Ahem, USAF.) In
a seniority-based system, there’s no stress...no
reason to get worked up about anything. You
know exactly how long it’ll be until you get
your chance. Just sit back and enjoy what you’re
doing until the math works for you to move on.
Easy peasy.
This system makes the choice to switch from
one airline to another look like a losing proposi-
tion on the surface. It certainly wouldn’t make
sense to leave a major airline after 20 or 25
years to start all over again. What about 15 years
though? What about 10...or 5 or 2?
Instead of just offering some generic con-
jectures, I decided to attempt an analytical
approach to this question. After all, airline pay
scales and upcoming retirement numbers are
generally public knowledge. So, let’s take a look
at some specific scenarios. We’ll look at the
difference between staying at one company,
and moving to another company. We’ll focus
on lifetime earnings and seniority progression.
To keep things as even as possible, we’ll look at
seniority position as a percentage of pilots in
the company.
the pilot network    15
the pilot network
Assumptions/Disclaimers:
1. We’re going to help keep things simple by only looking at flight pay,
and 401k match. Other factors like per diem, profit sharing, etc. vary a lot
depending on where you work and how many hours you fly. Realize that
the numbers I generate here are unrealistic low-end estimates for com-
parison purposes only.
2. We’ll assume that you only fly the reserve guarantee for each given
airline, and that you don’t pick up any extra flying for regular or premium
pay. At most companies, only the bottom 10% or so of pilots are on
reserve. The 90% who are line holders tend to fly at least 5-10 more hours
per month than reserve pilots. Again, this is an extremely unrealistic low-
end estimate. Your ability to work more at a given company (by being
single and/or not commuting) could affect your numbers.
3. We’re not going to assume any adjustments for inflation or pay raises.
We have pretty good numbers for 2018 & 2019, so we’ll base our calcula-
tions on those values assuming that any increases will be roughly equal
across the industry.
4. We’ll assume that a pilot always starts in a given company’s lowest-pay-
ing category and then follows a roughly-equivalent career progression at
each airline.
5. Unless otherwise noted, all of this data comes from airlinepilotcentral.
com. I’ve found their information to be reliable and current, though I
won’t vouch for it 100%.
6. We’re only accounting for mandatory age-65 retirements. From what
I’ve seen, most companies are exceeding these numbers by 10-20% due
to medical retirements or people just quitting early. So, hopefully, we’ll all
enjoy better seniority progression than what I show here in all cases.
Fair enough? Good. Let’s look at example #1:
A pilot named Shawshank is from Houston. His family owns land on a
fly-in airpark in a top-rated school district. He could build a house on the
runway, build a Velocity XL-5 in his hangar and fly the WB-57 for NASA out
of Ellington Field as his side-hustle. After a few months of waiting, Delta
was the only company that called him for an interview. He can either
commute to Atlanta forever or buy a cookie-cutter house in a subdivi-
sion in Peachtree City...far away from his great deal in Houston. Whomp,
whomp! Then, out of the blue, United calls and offers him a job. Should
he move? What will it cost him?
For starters, here’s what his career progression could look like at Delta:
(Delta has 14,500 pilots, a 16% 401k contribution, and a 75 hr
reserve guarantee.)
16    the pilot network
Granted, this is a pretty conservative career progression. Captain upgrade
is attainable in as few as 3 years right now, and I expect that figure to
eventually drop closer to the 4 months it was about a year ago. Still,
this shows a pretty awesome career. $6.3M in career earnings and that
assumes zero investment gains for 25 years.
I assume a similar career progression for United. This next chart shows
earnings and seniority progression side-by-side for Delta and United,
then shows what things look like if Shawshank abandons Delta for United
at the 1-, 3-, and 5-year points. (The portions that remain highlighted in
Red are his progression still at Delta before he makes the jump.)
The basic difference between these two options is only $200K in total
career earnings. That difference is insignificant for our purposes. (It’s
certainly a lot less than it costs to stay in the military for an extra year!).
This $200K-ish number could probably shift a million dollars in either
direction if you use different assumptions for career progression, and
depending on how much a pilot at each company works. So, accord-
ing to our assumptions, working at Delta vs. United is a wash for overall
career compensation.
It’s worth noting that, under our assumptions, a pilot starting at Delta
today will never get better than about 22% seniority, while a pilot at
United can reach as high as 16%. This means that United has more retire-
ments in proportion to the size of its pilot group in the future than Delta.
This 22% vs 16% isn’t a huge difference, but it’s something. It could mean
an extra year as a B777 captain at the end of your career.
Next, assuming all else is equal, leaving Delta after one year roughly
doubles the disparity in Shawshank’s career earnings if he hadn’t moved.
While that sounds like a lot, it’s less than 10% of his lifetime earnings. If
you can’t live an amazing life on $5.9M, then you can’t live an amazing life
on $6.3M either.
It’s interesting to note that spending a year at Delta before United only
costs Shawshank 3% seniority at the end of his career. Again, that’s not
much of a hit to never commute again.
So, would you be willing to give up $452K and 3% seniority to switch
from commuting to living in base, live in your family’s dream location,
and pick up an awesome side-hustle?
$452K is a lot of money, but I’d take this deal in a heartbeat based solely
on the Quality of Life improvements! (And honestly, a moderately indus-
trious pilot could probably make up that $452K by picking up extra flying
once he or she lives in base.)
The 3-year case is a little tougher. The difference in career earnings is
almost $800K. That feels like a lot more money! This is also enough delay
that Shawshank’s seniority will never catch up to where it would have
 the pilot network

been at Delta. It doesn’t lag by too much, 24% vs 22% in the last year, but
it’s a cost to consider. Would you give up this much for Quality of Life?
The 5-year case only feels incrementally worse to me. Yes, the difference
in earnings is over $1M and Shawshank never even makes it into the top
third of the company for seniority. (He lags the seniority he would have
had at Delta by anywhere from 12% to 25% for his entire career.) However,
it’s still a pretty amazing career. Would this be worth the trade?
While you start ruminating on those questions, let’s look at another sce-
nario:

A different pilot, named Katinka, flew KC-10s and C-5s in the Air Force.
More than a dozen of her friends went to FedEx, and she got a CJO from
them right away. FedEx is the industry leader in cargo and universally
respected. Its pay is outstanding. How could she not take the job, right?
The problem is that Katinka fell in love with Seattle and owns a gor-
geous house there. Her best options are long commutes to Memphis or
Anchorage. She got to fly a variety of missions and instructed a lot in the
states with the Air Force, but she’s finding that she doesn’t love constant
back-of-the-clock flying at FedEx. She saw the world flying for Air Mobility
Command and is starting to realize that she doesn’t love traveling
overseas for work. She’d rather fly domestic trips for work and use long
vacations for any overseas travel.

As it turns out, Alaska called Katinka shortly after she started at FedEx.
Alaska is a great airline. It always wins the #1 spot among US airlines in
evaluations from companies like JD Power. It does a ton of Hawaii flying,
and just expanded its network by merging with Virgin America. Most
importantly, Alaska has a huge hub in Seattle. Katinka could get the kind
of flying she wants with them, work for a great company, and live at
home. But should she give up a coveted job at FedEx to work for Alaska?
Let’s look at the same type of comparison for Katinka’s situation:

(I assumed some International and Ultra Long Haul pay at FedEx for por-
tions of Katinka’s career. These are pretty hefty overrides and I think it
makes the comparison more realistic. Also, this chart does my best to
combine the seniority lists of Alaska and Virgin. They’re not integrated on
APC yet.)

On the surface, the money situation here doesn’t look that different than
our last example. FedEx pays almost $400K more on the side-by-side
comparison in this spreadsheet, but changing assumptions or doing
some extra flying could make this little more than a rounding error.
However, look at the difference in seniority! Even after its merger, Alaska
is a small company with far fewer retirements over the next 25 years.
Katinka’s seniority at Alaska would keep pace with FedEx for a few years,
but she’d never get better than 38%, even if she’d started at Alaska. She’ll
hit that point at Year 16 at FedEx. This effect gets magnified as time goes
on. If she stays at FedEx for five years before switching, her seniority never
even breaks 50% at Alaska!

the pilot network    17

the pilot network
If we take a moment to look at the money side, it seems about the same
as the Delta/United situation. If she only waits a few years to switch, the
difference in lifetime compensation isn’t drastic. Delaying five years will
cost Katinka $1M. That’s a lot of money, but I’ll match my earlier assertion:
if you can’t enjoy life on $5.2M, then you can’t enjoy life with $6.2M either.
So, should Katinka give up that much seniority to end her commute?
It probably helps that Alaska only has two types of aircraft. It’s not like
she’ll need to chase a seat in a fancy widebody to reach the top of her
company’s pay scale. (She’s not after widebody flying anyway.) She’ll
probably be able to upgrade to Captain, but she’ll have to wait longer to
do it, be willing to stay on reserve longer to hold the days off she wants,
and she’ll never have the type of control over her schedule that she’d get
at FedEx. (I assumed that she upgraded in Year 9 at both companies.)
However, she’ll be living at home in an awesome location. She’ll still
make millions of dollars over her career, working for a great company. I’m
not presenting this to give anyone a definitive answer. I think each of us
has a situation unique enough that it has to be considered individually.
However, I feel that a pilot like Katinka could make this switch, even after
5 years at FedEx, and still have an outstanding airline career. She shouldn’t
arbitrarily refuse to consider Alaska’s offer because she’ll lose a few years
of seniority.
Just for fun, let’s take a unique look at one last situation. We’ll look at it in
both directions. Farva is married to a smart, talented woman who waited
for 11 years of living in many of the nowherevilles of our country to start
putting her MBA to good use. Farva got hired by American right after
leaving the Navy and started in Dallas where his wife got a good job
and started progressing in her career. Then Disney called. They offered
her a management position in Orlando at The Park. It’s a great company
and she’s always wanted to live there. Farva has two choices: 1) Move to
Orlando and commute to Miami (yuck!) or use some contacts to get a
very good shot at a job at JetBlue. He could be based in Orlando and not
commute while his wife gets to work at her dream job. Should he do it?
Here’s our chart:
(APC doesn’t have good retirement numbers for JetBlue. I used what I
could find here. It only went through 2033, so I assumed an arbitrary
number after that point.)
These two companies offer very different career paths. Right off the bat,
American pays $1M more in lifetime earnings than JetBlue. Switching to
JetBlue only increases that difference-to a value of nearly $1.7M for wait-
ing 5 years to switch. Your family will have to take that cost into account
when considering a switch like this.
If you think that’s a big disparity, look at the difference between seniority
18    the pilot network
progression at these two companies. A pilot hired by JetBlue today
will never do better than 37%, according to our numbers. However,
an American pilot will reach 5% seniority overall. Across our industry,
American has the most upcoming retirements. They will offer the best
seniority progression for any company switch for the foreseeable future.
However, going from them to JetBlue isn’t much of a hit. Even waiting a
full five years, it looks like switching to JetBlue only changes top seniority
from 37% to 42%. If the money were equal, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash at
such a small seniority hit. However, combining that with a cost of $1.7M
might be another story.
It will cost Farva a lot to end his commute and give his wife her dream
job. It might still be worth it though. Now you have some numbers to do
the math-based comparison.
As promised, let’s turn this comparison around, just for grins. Let’s say that
Farva had started at JetBlue and is in Orlando, but wants to get to Miami
so his wife can instead take a job working for the Dolphins. Here’s what
things look like if he makes this jump:
This situation is very different. Since American pays more overall and has
better seniority progression, the move from JetBlue to American is a no-
brainer at Years 1 and 3. It isn’t until the Year 5 case things get even. In this
case, you finally lose some money in lifetime earnings by switching from
JetBlue to American. Granted, it’s only $7,647 while we’ve been consider-
ing $200K a rounding error. However, it’s something. We also note that
Farva’s top seniority position in this case is 34%, only slightly better than
the 37% he’d have had at JetBlue. This is about as close as things get to
breaking even in our comparisons. At this point, Farva should make his
decision based entirely on things other than money or seniority if he gets
the offer to leave JetBlue for American at Year 5.
I took this case one step further, assuming that Farva didn’t get a call from
American until he’d been at JetBlue for 10 years. In this case, I think there’s
finally a pretty solid argument for not switching. The crest of American’s
massive retirement wave has already passed and things slow down sig-
nificantly. Farva’s seniority only progresses at about 1/3 the pace it would
have if he’d started at American initially. He’ll max-out at a pitiful 64% at
the company...far worse than he would have had at JetBlue. His career
earnings will be $600K lower than they would have been if he’d stayed
at JetBlue.
So, is it too late for Farva to make the jump in this case? Although it’s
clear-cut from some angles, I say it’s still a solid “it depends.” If Mrs. Farva
has always wanted to work for the Dolphins, or her pay and benefits are
just amazing, it might still be worth going. What is the mini-Farva situa-
tion for school/sports/activities? Will Miami give them better options than
they have now?
As a point of reference, my father-in-law had to switch airlines, against his
will. He was working for Eastern Airlines when they went bankrupt. After

a couple terrible years, he got hired by American. It was later in his career
than ideal, but he was happy to have a job. He progressed in his new
company but spent far more time as a Flight Engineer and First Officer
than anyone would want to. He finished as a Captain-qualified pilot on
the B777, though most of his flying on it was as a First Officer. While I’m
sure he would have preferred the pace of career progression many of us
will have access to, he still loved his career. He was happy traveling the
world. Steak and wine in Buenos Aires tastes the same whether you rode
in the left seat or the right seat to get there. In fact, unless your Captain is
a jerk, the FO should at least be drinking that wine for free. (Supposedly, a
great steak is cheap enough in BA that only the most stingy of Captains
would even dream of not covering the entire dinner.)
This job let Captain Bailey provide for his family and give them a stable life.
He’s happily retired and never has to worry about money again. He sac-
rificed a little prestige by staying longer as an FO, but I think he’s happy
with the way things went. I think you can be too if you decide to switch
companies later in your career.
Now, before we go, let’s consider a couple practicalities.
First, don’t work without a net! Don’t leave one company before you’re
sure of your spot at the next one. For me, this would ideally mean I can
bid days off at my old company to attend Indoc at my new company,
and I don’t give notice until I have a new ID card. This might not always
be practical, but I advocate waiting as long as it makes sense to finalize
things with your old company.
the pilot network
With that, don’t do something shady like take sick leave from your old
company to go to an interview. Bid the days off, drop a trip, or move your
vacation to cover it. We work in a very small industry, and social media
makes it increasingly difficult to keep a secret. You never know how word
can get back to your chief pilot that you put your company in a tough
spot to interview somewhere else.
Finally, when you do give notice at your old company, don’t burn things
down as you’re leaving. Go to your chief pilot in person to let him or her
know. Be thankful for the chance to work there and explain, tactfully, why
your new company is a better choice for your family. Hopefully, nothing
falls through at your new company. Even if things go smoothly, you never
know when you’ll need to call back to your old airline to get help trans-
ferring your 401K, your Known Crewmember credentials, your training
records, or something else.
Giving up seniority at one company to move to another isn’t common
in our industry, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. You and your family
will be far better-off working and living in the right place, than if you try
to make a bad situation fit for years on end. Don’t be afraid to keep your
applications open. Run the numbers and see how things will work out for
you. I think most cases will show that you don’t lose much by switching.
You could have everything to gain.
the pilot network    19
the pilot network

Article headline
Article standfirst that is multiple lines long that grabs the reader’s
attention by Robert Forest

NEED TO HAVE FUN AGAIN?

CONTACT FOR MORE INFO
WWW.THEPILOTNETWORK.ORG/ICON
20    the pilot network
the pilot network

the pilot network    21

the pilot network
Why Southwest?
What you need to know about flying for Southwest
by John Wims, SWA New Hire Pilots FB Group Admin
Let me first start out by saying this piece is
intended as a source of information for those
interested in potentially flying for Southwest,
for those pilots who would be a good fit here
and just don’t know what they don’t know
about this particular company. This is not a
“Southwest is the best” and here’s why they’re
better than the other companies. I don’t know
enough about the other companies to make
an accurate comparison. I’m sure each of the
majors is great in its own specific way, it just
depends on your personal variables as to
what’s best for you. There seem to be a lot of
misconceptions, rumors, questions, “fake news”
out there in various outlets of social media
concerning Southwest, so hopefully this piece
can clarify some of those as well. A couple
of quick examples I’ve personally witnessed,
“Southwest is a Super-Regional. You fly 6 legs a
day.” I’ve averaged 2.7 legs per day in 3 years. “I
know Southwest gets paid less…” With our new
contract, we get 15% B Fund contribution and
by the time I’m eligible to upgrade to Captain,
we will be among the highest if not the highest
narrow body pay rates at $282/hr ($197/hr for
FOs). “There is a 15-year upgrade at Southwest”,
after our most recent vacancy bid the junior
most captain in upgrade is a late 2008 hire. He
is currently 1800 pilots ahead of me, and we
are currently upgrading 50 per month. Doing
the math, that’s 36 months from now when I’ll
technically be able to choose to upgrade. That
would be a six-year upgrade in my particular
case. That is including the fact that we recently
retired a big percentage of our fleet (-300s)
in a fairly small period of time. As we slowly
get more MAX8s here, the upgrade numbers
COULD go down. Again, this is not an article
with the intention of stating Southwest is the
best. This is for those out there like me who
don’t know what they don’t know and are at
least interested in working for Southwest
A brief background on me to help setup the
opinion piece, I am your run-of-the-mill, aver-
age, everyday C-17 and 737 pilot. I grew up as
a military kid and spent most of my life in the
garden spots of Army Town, USA. I don’t have
any family legacy ties to a particular company
or to a particular region of the country. I have
22    the pilot network
a few thousand hours of flying long range,
international missions to 50+ countries and 5
continents. I have approximately 1000 hours
of night/NVG time. So, why does this matter? It
doesn’t, really. Simply put, it is just a reference
to show that I didn’t grow up in Texas dream-
ing of drinking Wild Turkey with Herb Kelleher
flying the Texas Two Step between Dallas, San
Antonio, and Houston, and that I do have some
frame for reference for long haul international
and flying on the back side of the clock
I’ve simplified my list why I chose to come to
Southwest (and stay here), to seven reasons.
Hopefully, some of these resonate with a few
who are still looking for the right choice for
themselves and their families (if applicable), and
offer a little perspective. All of these are subjec-
tive, and your results may vary.
1. QOL
This is my highest priority in my aviation career,
more than the rest of the deciding factors com-
bined. How much control do I have over my
life? How much time do I dedicate to work ver-
sus all the other things I have in my life besides
work? Am I stuck in a rigid flying schedule that’s
immovable but pays me the best? Can I fly trips
that allow me to catch every game or recital
I want? Am I spending more time at work,
getting to work, or getting back home than I
actually am at home?
2. Location
Locations of our soon to be 11 domiciles were
a big deal to me, I knew that my family wasn’t
going to enjoy the airline lifestyle if I was com-
muting nearly as much as we would if I could
just drive to work. Commuting vs domicile
living is basically two different jobs in and of
themselves. After our last active duty assign-
ment in Altus, Oklahoma, my wife gave me a
list of places she WANTED to live, not just where
she could make it work. That helped me really
focus my job search to a few companies. Long
story short, I am now Denver based and we
have really enjoyed living in Colorado. DEN is
currently SWA’s fastest growing base (1050 total
pilots by 2020), it has big expansion plans (14
more gates, 205 daily flights increasing to 250,
 the pilot network

west coast version of BWI planned, increase

in international routes) and our seniority list is
VERY junior on the low end of the list (3 months
after training).

3.Schedule Flexibility
I haven’t worked anywhere else, but I’ve been
told that our schedule flexibility is among the
best in the industry. What does that mean
exactly? As a simple example, I’ll use my
monthly schedule or “line”. Southwest has
basically two different schedules, AMs or PMs. I
prefer PMs (better for my family’s schedule and
DEN traffic). Typically, I have a 2 PM report and
I’ll fly to about 11 PM (Mountain Time Zone).
That’s not always the case, but it’s very typical
of my schedule. With my 55% seniority, I can
typically hold a We-Th-Fr PM schedule. At face
value, that means I work 12 days per month
and I am home 22 nights. My average line has
been around 96 TFP. I get home around 11:30
on Friday night and I’m done for the week,
only having been gone 2 nights. The flexibility
piece comes in when my personal schedule
for next month invariably changes. There’s a
dental appointment for the kids on Wednesday
afternoon, so I’ll trade with either the company
or another pilot to slide right or left. There’s a
concert at Red Rocks Friday night, ok I’ll either
break up my 3-day trip to same-day turns or
2-day trips, or I’ll trade it left. I don’t like the
ATL overnight, I’ll swap that out with a trip that
stays in SAN instead. There are more specific
details to it, but between trading with the
company (ELITT) or other pilots (TTGA), I have
never flown my originally assigned schedule
in my three years here. Lately, I’ve been able to
trade all my three-day trips into turns, so I can
be home every night to help out with kids. I
like working only 12 days per month, but some
months I want to make a little more money. So,
I’ll pick up extra flying from other pilots or from
the company at straight pay. I don’t play the
premium game (1.5x TFP) much outside of a
few select months, because at my seniority the
chances are lower and I don’t like being tied to
my computer that much for all the open time
alerts. As an example, with my We-Th-Fr sched-
ule, I’ll pick up a Cabo turn on Monday a few
times in the month. That puts me at 115 TFP for
the month, I’ve now only worked 14-15 days for
the month, and I’m still home 22 nights. That is
just my specific example of how our schedule
flexibility works here.

4. Vacation
We have traditional line bidding here at SWA,
rather than PBS. I won’t get into the details on
which one is better and why, that’s a whole
different article, but from what I’ve learned in
my time here…SWAPA and the pilot group
will likely NEVER go to PBS. They currently
have it valued at an EXTRA $50-70K annually
(that’s pretty conservative) for a 12 yr captain,
to maintain our current scheduling system.

the pilot network    23

the pilot network
During contract negotiations, the company
will likely always ask for PBS and the union will
likely never budge. A pilot here with 18 years of
employment will get 5 weeks of paid vacation,
which combined with our line bidding will net
him/her 10-12 weeks of vacation. Any trip that
touches a week of vacation gets dropped with
pay. And the quick-thinking pilots here have
found a way to get their entire summer off by
bidding heavy paying weekend lines, having
all their trips pulled, and during their weeks in
between actual vacation weeks they pick up
premium during our busy summer schedule. If
you wonder how some Southwest pilots can
pull down over $600K last year (captains) and
$250K (FOs) looking at our “hourly” pay rates,
our vacation rules play a big part in that.
Is Southwest the best? No, not for everyone.
However, it is for some, absolutely.
5. Financial
Southwest has a strong financial history. It’s
true that we have never furloughed before, not
saying we won’t ever have to but we haven’t
done in 40+ years, and we are one of the only
companies that talk publicly about how proud
of that we are. After 9/11, I heard we got close,
but between Herb keeping his word with the
new hire classes to keep getting a paycheck
and a big group of fellow pilots jumping out
on mil leave to help make room, not one pilot
lost their job. We have turned a profit for 40+
years. (southwest-airlines-40-consecutive-years-
of-profits) We have never declared bankruptcy.
We have the second biggest market cap in the
passenger carrier segment of the industry. We
have the 4th lowest debt total while having
the 4th biggest fleet size in the entire industry.
We grow every year (sometimes extremely
frustratingly slowly and conservatively), but
the thing that makes me really positive about
Southwest’s financial situation is that we’ve
done all this with a relatively small network. We
currently only have one airframe and 90% of
our operation is domestic. We have about 14
international locations and have only flown
international for the past 4 years. There’s a lot of
room to grow within the international market,
(southwest-airlines-confirms-its-intl-ambitions)
plus the likely possibility we will get a new
airframe. If the international growth can be
done the right way, (something-big-just-hap-
pened-at-southwest-airlines.aspx), there’s a lot
of potential for the company already with the
second biggest market cap and very little debt.
6. Pay
We don’t get paid hourly like everyone else. We
24    the pilot network
get paid by a different unit, called the Trip For
Pay (TFP). The TFP is a complex topic that will
take another article to truly explain in detail, but
the oversimplified answer is that the TFP is the
best type of pay unit for the type of flying we
can do here. It’s based on 243 NM of distance
covered, which helped with the old-school
Texas Two Step routes we flew in 25 minutes.
Why do we keep using the TFP? SWAPA has
done the math and the way our contract
works, pilots get paid the highest of distance
covered, hours flown, or duty rig every flight. So
that’s why they’ve elected to keep it, it always
maximizes pay for the pilots. A few sites have
done a decent job of converting our TFP to
hourly rates, at about a 1.15 ratio. Our average
monthly min guarantee is around 88 TFP. I’ve
never seen 88 TFPs built into my line except
for February. My monthly line averages 96 TFP
built in. I’d estimate an average SWA commuter
routinely hits 95-96 TFP per month. A typical
SWA domicile pilot hits 105-115 TFP per month.
There are heavy hitters who routinely hit 140-
160 TFP per month, playing the premium game.
I have a bigger emphasis on family time than
some of them, much lower seniority, and I also
have a monthly mil leave requirement to work
around, so I very rarely hit 150 TFP in a month.
Do we get paid less at SWA? Hard to say… I
don’t compare W2s at mythical, hypothetical
pilot bars. I don’t know very many people that
fly the standard baseline numbers at Southwest,
or any company for that matter, so I don’t think
there’s an easy answer. A pilot that hustles at
Southwest makes more than a pilot that takes
it easy at another company, and the opposite
is definitely true. The concept of who gets paid
more is fluid and very situational dependent on
the individual pilot’s work style and preferences.
7. Culture
The concept of culture is hard to define and put
into a quantifiable date point that is simple to
chart in excel spreadsheets. For those looking
to make a transition into this industry, compara-
ble data points in a spreadsheet are extremely
easy to use, so this fuzzy idea of culture can
sometimes be overlooked. When I talk about
the culture at Southwest, the last thing I’m
referring to is “fun”. We’ve been talked about
being the “fun” airline and to be honest, I don’t
know what that means. It’s not like we have “fun”
briefs, fly “fun” visuals or ILS’s, or do “fun” walk
arounds. The Flight Attendants and Ground Ops
personnel are known for funny announcements,
random dance parties, and positive attitudes.
My paycheck and 401K love all these things,
including our reputation for positive customer
service. As far as pilots are concerned, we aren’t
encouraged to be “fun”. We are just allowed
and encouraged to be ourselves. If you want
to make a funny PA, do it. If you want to wear
your favorite college team on your ID lanyard,
go ahead. If you want to wear a F16 tie tac on
your American Flag tie, go crazy. If you want
to wear the hat, wear it; if not, welcome to
the club. If you want to bring kids up front
during boarding and take pictures with them
or give them high fives, good on you. All the
wheelchair pushing, kid waving, funny quips
stuff is just people being themselves. Within
the pilot group, the culture here is better than
I expected but what I had secretly hoped for.
Probies don’t buy beers, ever. Very rarely even as
a 3 yr FO do I buy my own beers. If somebody
makes a coffee run, it’s “I’m getting an orange
mocha frappuccino, you want one too?”. One
Christmas, I put my trip up for trade with the
comment that all I’m looking for is a SEA over-
night so I could see my family at Grandma’s. A
random DEN pilot texted me and traded me
his SEA trip just because, nothing expected in
return. A different example, I lost a good friend/
classmate/squadron mate and was hoping to
host a large group of friends at my house for his
funeral nearby, the problem is the funeral was
scheduled on a day that I had randomly picked
up an extra trip (out of domicile too because
I was going to be in CA that day anyway). I
called my Chief Pilot and explained the entire
situation, he had the trip pulled (a little bit of
hassle for him because he had to coordinate
with the OAK Chief Pilot) immediately, very little
questions asked. Is the Southwest culture a real
thing? In my experience, that has been abso-
lutely true and I personally put a high value on
that hard to define “data point” in my nonexist-
ent Excel spreadsheet.
Is Southwest the best? No, not for everyone.
However, it is for some, absolutely.
After reading some great articles about the
industry in general and a few comparisons
between companies I realized I did not know
everything about a particular legacy company,
and I also realized that other people may
not know everything about Southwest. Each
company out there has plenty of positives that
attract various types of pilots and I hope to
read similar articles on why people work at their
specific companies
 the pilot network

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the pilot network    25

the pilot network

26    the pilot network


Careful What You
Ass-U-Me
A conversation by Jason “Emet” Depew, TPN Staff Writer and
Steven “Cheapshot” Chapman, TPN Guest Writer
Greetings TPN! Emet has been working hard to
get good information out to the masses to help
you make good decisions. He tries to balance his
enthusiasm for his company and his personal
bias in check by keeping numbers fair and
realistic when he does comparisons. And we
think he does a pretty great job of it. However,
we want to unleash him a little in this article
by inviting Guest Writer, Steven “Cheapshot”
Chapman to challenge his assumptions and
help contextualize what some of these topics
might look like through another lens. We hope
you enjoy eavesdropping on their conversation
as much as we did. - Matt & Adam, TPN Co-founders
------------------------------
Cheapshot: Hey Emet, you know what hap-
pens when you assume, right?
Emet: No, what happens?
Cheapshot: It makes an ass out of you and me.
Emet: Ha. Back to your point?
Cheapshot: There’s value in making your
estimates conservative. However, you also risk
missing out on an outstanding opportunity
if you’re so extremely conservative that your
numbers are well below what you could see in
reality. It’s also important to realize that all paths
in life come with risk and that there are ways to
mitigate the risk of airline life.
Emet: Oh, come on dude! I can’t be
soooooooo conservative that I’m leading
people astray, can I? I usually either multiply a
given airline’s reserve guarantee by 12 to get
the number of hours of pay a pilot can expect.
I add to that 401k contributions, per diem, and
profit sharing, as appropriate. Sometimes I just
use the rule of thumb of 1000 x (Hourly Rate)
= Annual Compensation. Those are both pretty
close, right?
Cheapshot: Um, no... I told you that after your
first article and the second! Let me tell you
about where I am and how much I’ve been
making. It’s not to brag but it’s the realities of
the W2 after a few years in the job. The cold
hard fact Emet that it’s really not all that difficult
to work more and make more money if you
want to. It’s one of the best things about the air-
line gig and being in a “corporate” job instead of
government work. (I will caveat that during the
bad years this wasn’t always the case.) Manning
at my airline tends to be on the lean side which
I have learned creates all sorts of opportuni-
ties for people to maximize their income. As a
general rule, I try to credit a baseline of around
85 hours a month as a lineholder. Usually, this
Let me tell you about where I am and how much
I’ve been making.
means that I have to pick up a day or two of
flying beyond what I was awarded through
the Preferential Bidding System (PBS). If you
do the math 85 hours a month is 1020 hours a
year. Already we are beyond the conservative
estimate of 1,000 hours a year. The reality is that
each year I have credited closer to 1200 hours a
year without really working that hard.
Emet: Now hold your horses right there
Cheapshot. Yes, (1000 x Hourly Rate) is a decent
the pilot network
rule of thumb for calculating an airline pilot’s
annual income. However, 1000 hours is also
a magic number because it comes from an
FAA regulation. 14 CFR 121.471 (Flight time
limitations and rest requirements: All flight
crewmembers.) clearly states that: “No...flight
crewmember may accept an assignment for
flight time in scheduled air transportation
or in other commercial flying if that crew-
member’s total flight time in all commercial
flying will exceed 1,000 hours in any calendar
year.” You’re busted dude! You break the rules...
you’re dangerous!
Cheapshot: Dude, relax. The key is the word
“Credit,” aka hours paid. If you look at how much
I actually fly it’s around 700 hours a year. My cur-
rent hourly pay is $167hr (year 4 B757/767)...So
let’s do some quick math. Base pay at 1200 hrs
is $200K, plus profit sharing of around 15% is
$30,000. Let’s not forget tax-free per diem yearly
of around $7,000. So total cash compensation is
roughly $237,000...but we are not done yet. At
my airline, we receive a 16% contribution to our
401K based on our flight pay and profit sharing
which in this scenario equals $36,000. So for
someone in their 3rd year, it’s not too terribly
difficult to make a ballpark of $273,000 in total
compensation. What’s even better is that each
year this number increases through upgrades
in positions, longevity ($178/hr in 2019), equip-
ment and new contracts. I will caveat that it
can also go downhill quick in a bad economy,
the pilot network    27
the pilot network
but I find that people are overly pessimistic in
this area and assign more risk than is probably
deserved to the airline job while being overly
optimistic about continued military service.
Emet: Wow, that’s a lot more money than I’ve
been quoting to people. I would have said
to expect about $174K in annual income for
someone in your position using the 1000x rule
of thumb. Even a more sophisticated spread-
sheet I have only estimates your pay at $215K
per year. I always try to be conservative when I
show people numbers to avoid accusations of
bias or manipulation. I always assume a worst-
case scenario where a pilot will only ever fly
the monthly reserve guarantee (the number
of hours the airline is required to pay a reserve
pilot, whether she flies or not.) I think a lot of
military pilots looking at the airlines use reserve
guarantee as well. It’s easy to find this number
for each airline on airlinepilotcentral.com. It’s
tougher to figure out what a lineholder gets
paid at each airline. Is it not valid to assume a
pilot will only fly the number of hours in the
reserve guarantee for his or her entire career?
I still get more time at home with my family
than I did on Active Duty, and I’m still in the
Reserves. You have to be intelligent about
how and when you work.
Cheapshot: Yes, that’s completely invalid!
Emet: I can’t argue with that. I guess that I
personally will probably make less than you
because I try not to work very much. Don’t you
have to be gone all the time to make this kind
of money?
Cheapshot: Absolutely not! I still get more
time at home with my family than I did on
Active Duty, and I’m still in the Reserves. You
have to be intelligent about how and when you
work. That old adage about working smarter
not harder is very true. It has taken me a little
time to figure this out and each airline has its
own intricacies, but here is my strategy: Some
months I might choose to pick up an extra day
or two of flying at single pay to help reach my
baseline of around 85 hours or more. I have
learned that I should always be careful of what
trips I pick up because some are more efficient
than others. I look for trips to pop up that might
be above the daily guarantee of 5:15 hours
and maybe credit 6-8 hours a day. It might just
be a one day turn with a deadhead from LAX
to DTW that pays almost 9 hours. It’s an easy
28    the pilot network
way to make some extra $$ while minimizing
my time away from base (TAFB) or time away
from home and family. Trips like that usually are
not part of the normal bid package, but when
people call in sick or there are wx disruptions,
our scheduling system tends to break up trips
or create “inefficient” trips for coverage (read
profitable for the pilot).
So an efficient trip is cool and all, but what I
try to do is be smart about when I might have
the opportunity to get double pay...yes double
pay for trips. At my airline we call these beau-
ties “green slips.” Think for a second about that
last time a military scheduler asked you to fly
an extra student sortie or assigned you that
SOF shift on a Friday night when you were
supposed to be on a date with your wife. What
was the extra pay worth?...you know the answer
“Service before Self!” Welcome to the real world
where extra work in my case now pays $336/
hr. Miss the date but take your wife on a vaca-
tion instead!
There are times where it’s just luck to be avail-
able and get awarded a green slip. However
most times its pure strategy of how you set
up your schedule and make yourself available
to take advantage of these opportunities. For
example, the month of May is always very
profitable for me. At my airline the sick leave
system resets on June 1st, which means that
for some funny reason many pilots are very sick
in the month of May. I guess it’s just a strange
coincidence, but I’m more than happy to profit
from it. I bid back to back trips trying to fly most
of my schedule in the first two weeks, leav-
ing myself a week or two off at the end of the
month to be available. It hasn’t failed me yet to
get one or two green slips in this month, mak-
ing my 120-140 hours of pay easily. Remember
that trip I talked about earlier to DTW? I actually
had that last May and for one day’s worth of
work credited almost 20 hours when it was all
over. Yes I worked one extra day, but that one
day paid me almost as much as 4 days of regu-
lar work. Again...smarter not harder.
I have also found that if I bid off the first few
days of the month and the last few days of
the month, especially in the summertime, it’s
a great time to get premium trips. Before the
company will put out a green slip they will
usually try to fill trips with reserve pilots. By the
end of the month, reserve coverage is far less
to possibly non-existent. They are out of reserve
pilots and then premium trips are offered to the
line pilots at a higher rate.
Emet: Right, because our contract limits how
much the company can make reserve pilots
work each month. In a busy month, most
reserve pilots will hit their limits long before
the month is over leaving the company short
on pilots to cover contingencies for the rest of
the month.
Cheapshot: Exactly! That means for those of
us available, excellent monetary opportunities
await! Other big times are around any holiday,
the super bowl, mother’s day or other events
that might keep a pilot from making it to
work and creating a shortfall that needs to be
covered. It is not difficult to average 100 hours
a month (aka 1200 hours a year) by strategi-
cally working a few extra days that pay very,
very well.
Even reserve pilots at my airline can partake
by flying green slips on their off days which
provide pay above the reserve guarantee. There
are times where reserve pilots have to fly into
a scheduled day off where they are awarded
pay back days. Pay back days can be very lucra-
tive in dropping trips for pay and opening up
opportunities for other green slips allowing
a pilot to double dip and more. If managed
perfectly it becomes a strategy called “Rolling
Thunder.” People allude to Rolling Thunder all
the time, but I think it ends up sounding more
complicated than it is. Would you care to spell it
out for us, Emet?
Emet: I’d love to! Let’s look at a hypothetical
reserve pilot’s schedule. In the charts below,
an “X” means a day off. (We call them X-Days.)
RES means long-call reserve - the company has
to give you at least 12-hours of notice when
they assign you a trip. (This can be converted
to short-call reserve a few times a month, but
that’s a discussion for another day.) GS is, of
course, a lovely little Green Slip where you get
paid double to fly. PB stands for Payback Day,
and we’ll see shortly why those are important.
So, let’s say I’m on reserve and I stacked 10 of
my 13 reserve days at the start of the month.
It’d be nice to take 10 days off, but mama just
said, “Show me the money!” I put in for and get
awarded a 4-day Green Slip on the first day of
the month. I get paid double for flying on my
X-Days, but something awesome happens. The
schedulers award me four PB days on the 11th
through the 14th. That’s our contract preserving

CHART A my X-Days as part of the Green Slip good deal.
At this point I’ll get paid the reserve guarantee for the
month, probably about 78 hours, plus I’ll get paid an
extra 21 hours for my GS. That’s 99 hours of pay for the
month...times $149/hr...plus 16% 401K contribution...all
times 15% profit sharing last year...plus per diem...and
we’re only 4 days into the month.
SEE: Chart A
Hopefully, you can already see how you can keep this
rolling, but here’s an illustration of how it could go a few
more rounds:
SEE: Chart B
As you see, every new GS yields a bunch of extra pay,
plus the PB days just get pushed later in the month,
meaning you still get 13 days off no matter what. You’ll
notice that I burn a few of my X- or PB-Days throughout
the month. Sometimes there just aren’t any GSs available.
In Round 3, I intentionally sat at home for three days to
enjoy a weekend with my family. Even with only stacking
10 of 13 available X-Days at the start of the month, this
hypothetical pilot was able to rack up a lot of extra pay.
Cheapshot: Nice illustration, Emet. We should note
that this is only a hypothetical example. It would be
pretty epic to get this many green slips in one month.
Most people will get 2 or 3 and call it good. Also, some
fleets tend to only give out green slips in the form of
CHART B those inefficient trips from broken rotations I already
the pilot network
mentioned. You might be able to get four days worth of
green slip, but you’d more likely burn an extra payback
day between two shorter trips. Green slip availability
also varies by fleet, staffing levels, and even time of year.
If you plan to work this strategy hard, you need to be
careful deciding which aircraft to bid for. You’ve also
mentioned how living in base is almost a requirement
for strategies like Rolling Thunder.
Emet: Awesome. I’ll admit that I just learned one or two
new strategies for making money. I’ll be testing them
out in the very near future. Is it common for pilots at your
company to exploit these kinds of opportunities, or are
you uniquely educated on how to do this?
Cheapshot: I’m about average among the pilots I know.
One of the easiest ways to free up your schedule to have
more time off or open yourself up for more premium
trips is to bid with line check airman. When a new pilot
has to check out on an aircraft, they will fly several trips
with an instructor conducting Operational Experience,
“OE”. You don’t need 3 pilots usually so you get to stay
home and get paid for the trip. You are then able to be
available to fly more. In a simple scenario let’s say you
got “bought off” a 4 day trip worth 21 hours. You then
pick up a 2 day green slip which pays 21 hours. In one
fell swoop you got paid 42 hours to fly 2 days. Even if
you didn’t get a green slip you could stay home and play
golf all while collecting 21 hours! Pilots play this game all
the time, there is no guarantee that you will get bought
off of a trip, but with as much training is happening
right now it’s a good bet it will happen more than you
think. We have pilots this year due to extenuating cir-
cumstances on the A-350 who are approaching 7 figures
by taking advantage of this opportunity. I have also
watched a lowly F/O on the 717 in LAX who routinely
did this and credited an average of 130 hours a month
only working 10-12 days a month.
Emet: So, what kinds of assumptions do you hear peo-
ple incorrectly using to try and compare airline pay to
the military?
Cheapshot: We have talked about a few of them
already like using way too conservative standards like
the 1,000 hour a year rule or reserve guarantees. I con-
stantly fail to see people adequately assess the risks of a
military career in a monetary sense. Everyone assumes
that they will get to 20 and receive a pension. I will read-
ily admit today that it is very likely with the current pilot
shortage, but in my career, I have gone through several
RIF’s and you and I were victims to wonderful person-
nel schemes like “TAMI 21.” (Both Emet and Cheapshot
spit on the floor...and get yelled at by their wives. TAMI
strikes again!) People will base pay and retirement off
of making 0-5 or above when there is no guarantee. I
have seen 20 year O-3 captains and you know that their
financial numbers are way different. Also, how do you
account for extra deployments (hopefully most 365’s are
gone..but they are always a threat), assignments that you
might not want or PCS locations your spouse absolutely
does not want to live in. I fail to see people account for
the pilot network    29
the pilot network
the loss of control of their lives and essentially
freedom when you are under contract. That
comfy security blanket of military life comes
with some heavy handcuffs.
I also see people place great weight on a pen-
sion, but completely fail to address Time Value
of Money (TVM) for a retirement account that
begins to accrue very quickly in the airline job
with Defined Contribution (DC) plans. With the
higher income levels of the airline job I find
I have more disposable income for investing,
filling up my 401k and contributing to other
retirement accounts like backdoor Roths.
Probably the biggest mistake I see in military
guys making valuation comparisons is calcu-
lating the effect of seniority. Much of what I
I described earlier in this article is based on
having some relative seniority in your category.
You have to account for the loss of 5 -10 years
of seniority staying in versus starting today in
this robust hiring and retirement environment.
Seniority is difficult to comprehend but it is by
no means intangible. There are several issues
in seniority calculations that people gloss over.
First is longevity on the pay scale. Most airlines
top off at 12-15 year of longevity. When you
decide to stay in, compared to when I got out,
I will be at the top of the longevity pay scale
when you are just starting. If we were both
first officers on the 7ER you are looking at a pay
difference of $60-90 an hour.
Now let’s be realistic, based on today’s data in
10 years or less a person hired now will either
be a narrow body captain or widebody FO
with some good seniority. With retirements
happening as fast as they are, a decision to stay
in another 10 years probably means a career
mostly as a first officer with an opportunity to
upgrade maybe in the latter part of a career.
2nd year 737 pay is $130 vs 12 year Capt pay of
$275. At a minimum, you are talking a pay dif-
ference of $145K a year. Let’s say that your O-5
retirement pension provides you $55,000 a year.
That’s still a $90K differential of income that year.
Sure that gap will get a little smaller over the
years, but then I will upgrade to a Widebody
Captain and at age 60 we are even because I
will get close to that same military retirement
from the reserves. The point is that my earning
power over time much like TVM is higher and
compounded at a higher rate today because of
upcoming retirements and the best opportuni-
ties in seniority this career has had in decades.
Emet: Good point on military retirement
becoming a moot point at age 60. A reserve
retirement isn’t quite as big a check as an active
duty retirement, but I still advocate that this is
the ideal career path for a military pilot! (https://
30    the pilot network
community.thepilotnetwork.org/posts/ideal-
military-pilot-career-path-spelling-it-out-part-1)
Cheapshot: You’re absolutely right. Seniority
just doesn’t stop with pay rates, with longevity
comes additional benefits like vacation and
sick time. I will always enjoy an extra 2 weeks of
vacation during the year. Add that up and that’s
around 40 weeks of pay over 20 years...almost
a full calendar year’s worth! Sick leave is also
important especially as we get older. At our air-
line we max out at 270 hours a year at 20 years.
When you first start you get 50 hours which
increases to 240 by your 9th year. Now, not eve-
ryone uses their full sick leave benefit each year,
but if you have to go out on a medical issue or
just have a bad year, you have coverage for 3-4
months before having to touch disability.
Lastly, I hear people list “job satisfaction,” “lov-
ing the mission,” “loving your job,” etc. as good
reasons to stay in. Those are great reasons to
stay in. All of us have served and/or continue
to serve out of a love for our country and have
Probably the biggest mistake I see in military
guys making valuation comparisons is
calculating the effect of seniority.
taken great pride in the missions we fulfilled. It’s
difficult to know if you will like the airline job or
find the same type of satisfaction from it that
you do in military service. I will offer that I for
one have not felt that I am missing something
in the list above. Flying for a passenger carrier I
enjoy the interaction with passengers and the
opportunities I get to help them in their jour-
ney. It might be high fives and fist bumps with
the kids as they leave the airplane or letting
them visit the cockpit to inspire the next gen-
eration of aviators. It might be the emergency
divert to save a woman’s life who stopped
breathing. Or recently getting our ground team
together and having our High Value Customer
(HVC) Porsche at the gate to make sure a cus-
tomer in economy could make her next flight
to see her dying grandmother with only hours
to live after we had an extended ground delay.
Her tears as she left the airplane and got in the
car knowing she was going to make it said it all.
There is plenty of job satisfaction, it is different
but nonetheless, if you choose to be involved
you get the chance to make big impacts in
people’s lives.
Emet: Great points. I can’t emphasize enough
the idea that Seniority is Everything! (https://
community.thepilotnetwork.org/posts/senior-
ity-is-everything)
Beyond basic monetary comparisons, you really
have to look at Quality of Life. I don’t know
about you, but I couldn’t help working hard
when I was on Active Duty. When I enjoyed my
job, I worked hard because I loved what I was
doing. Even when I didn’t necessarily love my
job, I ended up getting extra responsibilities
because I was good at what I did. As a result, I
spent a lot of time at work, and I’m not talking
about my 8 deployments.
“Living the dream,” as it were, in a military job
even takes a toll on a day-by-day level. I remem-
ber getting home well after my wife did most
days. By the time I walked through the door, we
were all hungry for dinner. Before we knew it,
it was time to wrap things up and get the kids
ready for bed. I really didn’t get much time with
them...and that was during the tiny portion of
my career that we were assigned less than 150
miles away from each other.
Cheapshot: Exactly! When you were home
between deployments and TDY’s you were
home at night. But how much time did you
actually get to spend with your family or doing
things you wanted to do? I might be gone
10-14 days a month, but the rest of the time
I am home with no “job” responsibilities, no
emails or phone calls...absolutely nothing! I
have found the quality and length of my time
home is night and day from active duty. My 18
month old daughter actually knows who I am
and I have seen so much more in her develop-
ment that I didn’t get to experience with my
other 3 kids while on the deployment train.
I also have a schedule a month in advance that
I get to bid for. We can make plans and not
worry about how the schedule at work might
change or how a world event might send us
spinning up to deploy. Our world is far more
predictable and stable. We can take vacations
without being on leave or vacation time with
just schedule management. The freedom we
have now is truly mind boggling.
Emet: Okay, I get it. Things are better for you
and your family now that you work for a major
airline. This could just be a fluke though, right?
Maybe this is just what works for your family. It’s
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the pilot network

The 4 P’s
possible to have a good family life while on AD,
isn’t it?

There is absolutely a great career path in both

the military and the airlines.

Cheapshot: Fair enough. I feel like there’s

more to discuss here, but this is a good place to While attending a recent career fair I heard these three w
leave things for now. Specifically, I feel like we
could go into greater depth on the concept of recruiter when discussing strengths of applicants: Profes
risk and how military pilots perceive risk with
respect to a civilian job. Maybe that’ll be Part 2 and Patience. I have a fourth P word that may be helpfu
of this article.

Emet: For now, I’ll absolutely concede that the
numbers I’ve been using to estimate airline
pilot pay represent the very lowest-end of what
you can expect to earn. Based on what you’ve
said, I’ll even admit that my numbers run the
risk of being inaccurate. I think it’s pretty sig-
nificant that airline pilot pay (and overall career
compensation) rapidly out-paces military pay
(and overall compensation) using my numbers.
For someone who lives in base and is able to
use some of the strategies you’ve mentioned
here, military pay and benefits start to seem
almost laughable.
I’m glad you’ve also supported my ongoing
assertion that it isn’t all about the money. I
love the fact that you’re able to make so much
money while still enjoying far more time at
home than you used to get. You’re massively
out-earning your peers while still basically
spending as many days at work as they get off
from work each month. That time to spend
with your family and do as you please would be
priceless, even without the pay difference.
By Charlie Venema, Checkedandset.net
Professional
Professional can be widely applied and is often thought of with
regard to how one appears in person or the work that they
accomplish. Stop and think about how this fits into pilot hiring;
no one can see you, but they can see how you present yourself
when they review your application and resume. Over the years
I have seen many different approaches to the description of
duties on an application. One of my all-time favorites was from
a First Officer who described his job as a regional airline FO
as ‘Assist in the duties of part 121 operations, get coffee’. This
approach is probably better suited to an application for a barista
position rather than a big three airline job. Use of unprofes-
sional language gets noticed quickly in this business and can be
a significant roadblock.

Cheapshot: The bottom line here is that

if you’re a military pilot and you’ve been
assuming that the military can do anything
resembling the lifetime compensation of
an airline career, you’ve been using flawed
assumptions. Unless you love your military job
more than anything else, and you’d be truly
unhappy as an airline pilot, the same goes for
Quality of Life. When you sit down with your
family, do yourself the favor of making sure
you’re referencing valid data in your decision
making. We don’t get a bonus if you bail on the
military - we just want to make sure that you
don’t make a decision you’ll regret based on
bad or lacking info.
Emet: Thanks Cheapshot for taking the time
to join me and provide a fresh perspective on
this decision-making calculus. Maybe we’ll do it
again sometime.
Personality
Personality is another trait that would seemingly be observed
in person but alas, no one can see you yet, only your docu-
ments. The words and phrases that you use to describe yourself
are in fact an extension of your personality and you have a
tremendous opportunity to let that shine. This can be difficult
on an application but is quite easy to accomplish on a resume.
Imagine a recruiter looking at 100 resumes over two days at a
job fair. It is a safe bet that nearly 90 of them are merely regur-
gitations of companies worked for and dates of service. Find
opportunities to showcase what makes you unique and how
you have added value along the way.

32    the pilot network

 the pilot network

words used by a
ssional, Personality,
ul, Perspective.

Patience
Patience is the hardest one to embrace as it
is often trumped by frustration. We live in an
immediate gratification world, but pilot hiring
is old school, it often takes years to even get
noticed. Getting hired at a major is going to
take time, and your best approach is to use that
time wisely. Do you have your college tran-
scripts? Are your documents current? Have you
started thinking about interview questions and
stories to share? Make sure that you are ready
for the call when it comes.

Perspective
Perspective can best be explained with a quick story. After a terribly frustrating
day in the office, I sat down in my mentor’s office and stated that it was hard
to keep my glass half full when people keep poking holes in it. The reply was
simple and eloquent… “Charlie, you have to decide if you want to keep filling
it, or let it empty.” Don’t share with the recruiter that you can’t believe that all
of your First Officers are leaving to the majors, instead, share the opportunities
you have had to mentor new First Officers that will one day replace you. It’s
about perspective.

the pilot network    33

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34    the pilot network


Variable Speed...
for Your Sanity
by Jason Depew, TPN Staff Writer
There are a few concepts in our world so ubiq-
uitous that we don’t even realize that they’ve
become unnecessary. Sometimes I notice
terms in advertisements or on package labels
and laugh at how meaningless it is that they’re
touted as “features.” When was the last time you
got excited about a wireless remote, an auto-
matic transmission, or a variable speed drill?
Once you squeezed that trigger, it was full-speed-no-matter-what.
Yes, there was a time when the only remote
controls were attached to your TV by a wire.
Can you imagine? You can still buy a car with-
out an automatic (or continuously variable
electronic) transmission, but it’s increasingly
rare. I don’t even know if you can find a power
drill that isn’t variable speed anymore, but my
dad used to have one.
For 8-year-old Emet, my dad’s drill was
challenging to use. Once you squeezed that
trigger, it was full-speed-no-matter-what. If you
weren’t prepared for that, you’d quickly destroy
whatever project you were working on. I remem-
ber when he first bought a variable speed drill
and we were both pleased and amazed at how
much easier it was to use. It turns out that full-
speed or nothing isn’t always good.
That concept appeared again later in my life.
During one high school spring break, my two
best friends and I decided to take a road trip
from Colorado to Idaho and Utah...chasing
women and adventure. We piled into James’
parents’ VW Golf and headed north toward
the Wyoming border. Spring break is only a
week long and we had places to be. We didn’t
want to waste any more time driving than we
had to, so without even discussing it, each
the pilot network
of us drove as fast as he could stand it the
entire way. I think our average speed for the
trip was probably in the 80s...in an era when
the national speed limit was 65. My crown-
ing achievement for the driving portion of
the trip was passing a Wyoming cop...on
the right...on a long uphill...without getting
pulled over.
It was fun to drive that fast the whole trip, but
our moronic speeding had an unintended
consequence. The first time we stopped for
gas, we found that the car wouldn’t start after
we were done refueling. The engine wouldn’t
even turn over. We asked around the gas sta-
tion, we used a pay phone to call home (yes, it
was that long ago. I think we paid $0.67/gallon
for Wyoming gas that day.) Nothing worked.
Luckily, we spent long enough looking for help
the pilot network    35
the pilot network
that the poor motor got a chance to cool down.
Worried that we’d be stuck in Nowheretonfieldville,
WY, for the night, we tried starting the car one
more time, and it roared to life. We shouted
in triumph, high-fived each other all around,
jumped in the car, and raced off...at the same
breakneck pace as before.
We didn’t realize that we were probably causing
our own problems until later. Instead, our solu-
tion was to hot pit at the gas pump for several
legs. I cringe thinking about the wear that we
put on that poor car.
I believe that people are like my buddy’s little
VW Golf...if we run at full speed all the time we
break. (This belief is based in part on having a
MS in Human Factors.) I believe that your flying
career, and your life in general, needs to be variable
speed. Otherwise, you will eventually break.
The problem is that most “cool down tours” really aren’t.
Unfortunately, the military doesn’t really give
you an option here. It requires you to work at
least 5 days per week...forever. Those days aren’t
the career equivalent of a 35 mph Sunday after-
noon cruise either. They’re more like my 80 mph
Cannonball Run across Wyoming as a young,
dumb, and ugly teenager. The days are long.
The mornings are early and the nights are late.
The deployments are tough on you, but they’re
even worse for your family.
Every once in a while, your personnel office will
tell you they’re giving you a break. The prob-
lem is that most “cool down tours” really aren’t.
Mine was supposed to be teaching USAF pilot
training. I went from fairly long workdays and
being deployed half the time in an operational
squadron, to working 5 x 12-solid-hour days per
week...continuously at Laughlin AFB. I found
myself wishing I could go back to fighting the
war so I could get some rest.
Other supposed “cool down tours” can be just
as bad. RPA life is an endless haze of shift work.
Upper-level professional military education may
actually give you shorter hours, but it’s usually
a 1-yr course bookended by PCS moves that
are extremely stressful for any family...especially
your kids. Most staff work involves extremely
long hours because the types of officers who
end up in staff leadership positions are there
because they’re workaholics. (That’s not meant
to be mean...look at it from a strictly utilitar-
ian perspective. Staffs are machines and they
exist to get work done. Who would you want
36    the pilot network
running your staff?)
Long hours aside, life in the military is also
significantly more stressful than you realize. As
a pilot who aspires to write good and wants to
learn how to do other stuff good too, it’s dif-
ficult for me to even express how drastic the
difference is between those two lives. Take a
look a what I wrote about stress in this post to
get a better idea.
In the military, you’re like me and my buds, rac-
ing across Wyoming, unable to turn off the car
because it wouldn’t start again. That is a tough
way to spend 20 years.
I’ve written about a better way, suggesting the
Ideal Career Path for a Military Pilot. It’s occurred
to me recently that one of the best parts of this
career path, and airline careers in general, is the
ability to adjust the speed of your life. Let’s look
at some examples:
When I bid for my schedule this October, it
included 4 x 4-Day trips. (They were all great
trips too!) However, my wife wanted to go to a
professional conference during one of my trips
and we didn’t have a good option for backup
childcare. I’d also accidentally bid for a trip over
Halloween, one of our family’s most beloved
holidays. I didn’t want to miss Halloween with my
kids, and I wanted my wife to be able to go to
her conference, so I dropped those two trips. It
cost us some money, but it was totally worth it!
Over the last year, I’ve averaged one dropped
trip a month. I make a little less than I could, but
I value time with my family more than I value
the lost money. Even better, I’m still basically on
par with my military peers who work nearly
twice as much as I do.
I recently flew with a captain who uses a differ-
ent strategy. He’s relatively senior in a
lower-paying narrowbody category (the B717.)
He bids reserve with weekends off and does
very little work. He told me: “I’ll probably stop
bidding reserve if I ever have to work more than
3 days a week.”
This is impressive. I work about 12 days per
month and get about 63 hours of pay for my
trouble. This captain works 12 days or less per
month and makes no less than the Reserve
Guarantee of 75-78 hours. Math, math… At his
hourly rate of $245/hr, times 75 hours, plus 16%
401K contribution, plus 15% profit sharing, plus
per diem, means he made at least $25K per
month, or about $303,000 total last year. That’s a
whole lot of money for spending 20+ days per
month not working.
You can use the graduate-level version of this
strategy if you fly a widebody aircraft.
(Assuming your company has such things.) The
main difference is that you wouldn’t have to
work as much. Most widebody line holders
enjoy their trips and don’t want to miss out on
one, so there aren’t as many last-minute sick
calls that require the company to use reserve
pilots. I’ve spoken with more than one pilot
who flew less than 5 days per month, for years
on end, bidding reserve in my company’s large
widebody categories. I recently flew with a
B717 captain who was going back to the right
seat of the B777. His new pay rate will be $10/hr
less, but he could potentially cut 12 days or less
of work per month to 5 or less. I’d say that’s
worth the pay cut!
In this case, however, the captain bidding back
to an FO seat was going to use yet another
strategy. He was going to bid for a regular line
instead of bidding for reserve. The B777 flies such
long legs that a 3-day trip is worth at least 25
hours of pay. Three of those trips, for 9 total days
of work, and your schedule is full for the month.
Yes, that’s a maximum of 9 days of work for full
pay without even having to be on reserve. But
wait, there’s more! That schedule only works in
the months when you don’t have vacation. A
week of vacation pays about as many hours as
one of those trips. This captain has been around
long enough that he gets 5 weeks of vacation
every year. So, for 7 months he’ll work 9 days
per month, then for the other 5 months of the
year he’ll only work 6 days per month. That’s a
grand total of 93 days of work per year. In case
you’re wondering, that’s a great total of 93 days
of work per year for roughly $441K/$301K for a
captain or FO, respectfully. (Using 2019 pay
numbers.) I won’t be able to hold the right seat
of the B777 until Year 5 or 6 at my company.
When I do, holding a line would pay me
$275,000 per year, or about $3000 per day of
work. That’s pretty amazing.
If you want or need more time at home with
your family, one of these strategies can give it to
you. If you’re following Uncle Emet’s Ideal

Career Path you could also use that extra time
for more flying at your reserve unit. If you live
where that unit is located, this could mean
almost no time away from your family on
reserve flying days.
The beauty here is: you aren’t locked into any of
this. In the military, if you take an assignment,
you’re basically locked into a schedule for the
next 3 years, give or take. In the airlines, you can
adjust the speed of your life month to month,
week to week, or even day to day.
Let’s look at some ways you can crank that dial up:
First, you can be a senior line holder. Bid a full
schedule with room to add more flying. As soon
as your schedule comes out, put in requests for
extra flying. The results will depend on your
seniority, your company, and your fleet, but
most airlines will have extra flying for you to do.
At Delta, you can get priority for this extra flying
by bidding to do it for regular pay. (We call this
a “White Slip.”) If you know that staffing or
reserve availability are particularly low, or you
live close to your base and have lots of flexibil-
ity, you can bid to do this extra flying for
premium pay. This usually ranges from 1.5x to
2.0x your normal pay rate. (At Delta it’s double
pay, and you submit a “Green Slip” to bid for it.)
Dolla dolla bills anyone?
At Delta, you can do this as a reservist too. You
can fly on your off days for regular or premium
pay. It’s possible to use a strategy called Rolling
Thunder to make unreal amounts of money. (A
friend and I are working on a post where we’ll
illustrate exactly how that works. Stay tuned.) I
think Rolling Thunder could work at many other
companies too, but I have yet to get deep into
contract provisions when I run into old buddies
flying for other companies.
At the airlines, if you turn the dial up and work more,
you make more money…you’re compensated for
your efforts. If you were to suggest this idea to the
military machine, you’d just get laughed at.
On Year 3 B717 FO pay, one extra 4-day narrow-
body trip yields about $4,600 in total
compensation. That’s on top of an otherwise full
schedule paying at least $183K/yr. If you do one
of those per month, you’re boosting your annual
income by $55,750K. If you’re chasing Green
Slips, you could potentially double that number.
A Year 4 A330 FO flying one extra 3-day trip would
earn an extra $7,100 in total compensation. Doing
that once a month would provide an $85,000
boost to her $249K per year annual compensation.
As I said, this can change from day to day. Let’s
say you’re sitting around with your family hav-
ing dropped a couple trips for more time at
home. Suddenly, Elon Musk knocks on your
door and offers to take you out to lunch and
give you a brand new Model 3 for $45K if you
buy it right now. You can’t resist. Suddenly, you
need to come up a sizable chunk of money.
That $45K is almost 6 months of total compen-
sation for an 11-year O-4 in the military. Or, you
could log in to your airline’s system and start
looking through list of trips available for extra
flying. (Most companies refer to the collection
of available trips as “Open Time.”) You start
picking up trips. At Year 3 pay on the lowest-
paying aircraft at Delta, I could pay off that
Model 3 by flying 10 extra trips, if I bid to fly for
normal pay. If I can manage a few GSs, I could
potentially cut that number in half.
Granted, this is a pretty ridiculous example for
some people. What might be a better reason?
Maybe your child suddenly decides that she
can’t live unless she attends Yale, at a cost of
$70K/yr. Maybe one or both of your parents
gets sick. They need help paying medical bills,
paying off a house, or you need to move them
in with you...any of which could cost a lot.
Maybe your stay-at-home husband decides he
wants to start a business and suddenly needs
$50K to get started. (I’ve flown with each of
those pilots.)
For a military pilot, these kinds of unexpected
expenses will either tap into savings, or they
just aren’t options. For an airline pilot, just crank
the dial up to 8 or 9 for a few months and you’re
good. Then, the moment you write the check to
pay for this expense, you’re free to ease the dial
back to a 6, or a 2, and go back to the easy life.
For the airline pilots in the Network, have you
benefited from having this kind of flexibility in
your lives? For our military pilot brothers and
the pilot network
sisters, how much would you value having this
much flexibility?
We could stop things right there, but I think it’s
worth examining one more point:
At the airlines, if you turn the dial up and work
more, you make more money…you’re compen-
sated for your efforts. If you were to suggest this
idea to the military machine, you’d just get
laughed at.
Please forgive me, but this begs the question of
how do you value your own time? How do you
value the precious, finite number of minutes in
your life? I’m all about being dedicated to a
cause, and that’s exactly what military service is.
However, when your job requires you to put in
all kinds of long hours in the office, or spend
months on end deployed, do you value your
time so little that it’s worth spending all that
time away from your family or doing busywork
for someone else for no additional compensation?
Don’t get me wrong, the crux here, the driving
issue, isn’t the money. It’s what you can do with
your life in the future if you’ve earned enough
money in the past. For me, if I’m going to sacri-
fice my precious time for something right now,
it’d better give me a lot more time later on in
life. This is a discussion so involved and complex
that it deserves its own treatment in a separate
project. I’m working on it….
For now, I just want you to think about the pace
of your life. Is it actually sustainable? Are you at
risk of breaking...of burning out?
My friend’s poor VW Golf had zero control over
our speed selection on that road trip years ago. If
it’d had some control, it probably would have
governed our speed. It could have prevented
some long-term damage, and we probably
wouldn’t have had to worry about it starting after
each pitstop. How much control do you really
have over the pace of your life? If you want (or
need) more control, there is no debate about the
places where you can and can’t find it.
the pilot network    37
 ®
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