The contracts that pilots unions have negotiated with their airlines are pretty fucked up. Newbies (after several years of education, and a few more years of do

The contracts that pilots unions have negotiated with their airlines are pretty fucked up. Newbies (after several years of education, and a few more years of doing flight instruction to get enough hours) are basically stuck working as a first officer (i.e. copilot) for either UPS/FedEx or a regional airline, with salaries around $30,000/year. Your career progression depends on being promoted to captain, which is entirely based on seniority. If you're lucky enough to have enough spots open up via retirement or expansion, you then have a hope of being accepted by a major/legacy airline, and make $50-70k/year, scaling up to 150-300k, depending on the airline. Once you join, due to the seniority-based payscale/captain waitlist, you're pretty much locked in, except for maybe a one time upgrade from a major airline to a legacy one. Example payscales: Envoy Air, a regional airline that's a feeder for American Airlines: http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/regional/envoy_air http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/regional/envoy_a... JetBlue, a major airline: http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/major-national-lcc/jetblue_airways http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/major-national-l... American Airlines, a legacy airline: http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/legacy/american_airlines http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/legacy/american_...