Sparrows, does your extremely simple model account for the difference in the rate of promotion between the two? What is the expected time to Capt at JQ, what is the time at QF?
I would suggest that JQ would provide a better short term outcome cash income, with a lower total remuneration over a
full working career. However a JQ Captain has gained a very valuable commodity - experience through rapid promotion, is able to tap the extremely lucrative tax free contracts not available to First Officers. Which seat would you rather be sitting if a major slowdown occurred?
Historically he pilots who have always come out on top during crises are those that are most valuable to an airlines, Captains, checkers and trainers.
Truth is opportunity cost is very expensive. Quick promotion and valuable experience that can command a large premium on the open market
or better pay in the longer term is the tradeoff between the two groups within QF. The point is there is no "better" option, just different ones with differing market employability profiles.
This general feature of opportunity cost of training and experience was first identified more that 240 years ago by Adam Smith in
1776 in the
Wealth Of Nations.
Originally Posted by Adam Smith
10.1.25 The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for
the employment to which he is educated, is very different in different occupations.
In the greater part of mechanic trades, success is almost certain; but very
uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker,
there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes: But send him
to study the law, it is at least twenty to one if ever he makes such proficiency
as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those
who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks.
In a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to
gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. The
counsellor at law who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to
make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only
of his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than
twenty others who are never likely to make any thing by it.
How extravagant soever the fees of counsellors at law may sometimes
appear, their real retribution is never equal to this.
Compute in any particular place, what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely
to be annually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that
of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed
the latter. But make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students
of law, in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a
very small proportion to their annual expence, even though you rate the former as high,
and the latter as low, as can well be done. The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far
from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable
professions, is, in point of pecuniary gain, evidently under-recompenced.