It Beats Working For a Living

In two more days I will have completed my first year with Atlantic Southeast Airlines. This is an important milestone in at least a couple of regards. First and foremost, during the first year the airline can terminate your employment without cause. Arriving late for an assignment is sufficient cause. So is your shirt coming untucked. Fortunately ASA is not known for its draconian behavior, but there is one area where I feel a bit exposed—commuting. Generally the last day of a reserve assignment I am on call until 9:00PM and the last flight home leaves at 8:55. So I fudge and leave early. Sometimes when feeling brave I have left on the 6:30 flight. It’s a calculated risk given that there is virtually no assignment the airline could give me and get me back in time for my day off, so the chances of it backfiring are slim. Nevertheless, I almost always check my cell phone upon landing with a hint of fear that Scheduling called while enroute. Chances are I would have to meet with a Chief Pilot who would give me a tongue lashing but likely nothing worse. Hopefully. But like I said, if the airline felt so inclined, it would be more than enough to fire me. But once a pilot has completed a year he or she then has union protection and it is much much much harder to fire them. I will still be nervous when commuting home if I leave a little early, but I won’t fear for my job. My stress level will go down a notch.

The second big deal about the year mark is the pay raise. First year first officers don’t make very much. If you are interested in knowing just how much you can click here. Every little bit helps, and it’s nice to have made it through the most difficult stage. Pilot pay raises come according to years of service—each year your pay goes up. The biggest jump is after the first year, then it grows much slower. The next real jump will come when I upgrade to captain. And when will that be? Given how the whole industry has slowed down, probably not for another five years. Sooner would be nice, but it’s not something to expect. The only ways to speed up that process are for the airline to grow or for senior pilots to leave, whether for retirement or to other airlines. Naturally we pilots hang on every rumor of growth, but it doesn’t take long to recognize that the rumors are almost always nothing more than just that.

Overall it has been a good year. The only real negative is that I am still on reserve, meaning I still do not have a regular route and schedule and so fly only when someone else doesn’t show. That’s why I have now sat in my crash pad in Atlanta for the last three days without going anywhere. I still have three more days before I go home again. Usually I’m here for four or five days at a time, but I’m here for six this time around because I was able to more around some off days so that next week I will have five days off in a row. That will be very nice. Again, the process of “holding a line” or regular schedule is a question of movement upward in seniority. Right now it’s pretty slow, but I expect that by late Spring I should finally have a line. That also comes with at least one more day off per month.

On the plus side I fly a jet airplane and they pay me to do it. I have visited Mexico and Canada plus many cities in the eastern U.S., not all particularly glamorous but good people live in them all. As my Dad, a retired United pilot, used to say, “It sure beats working for a living.”