Originally Posted by
futz
One other thing I forgot to mention is that $352 is the book rate but we get an additional $6.50/hour for international flying (which is all I do). So it's really $358/hour for the flying hours. (The extra $6.50 doesn't apply to FAR 117 extension pay, or vacation pay.)
The example I gave was $425,000 in salary but that didn't include any premium pay. The 2019 taxable income of $495,000 I mentioned did include some premium trips (and last year's profit sharing).
It's damn good money WHILE it lasts. UAL has 12 flights per day from the US to China and they just announced they're cancelling 8 of the 12 daily flights for February and beyond until they get the virus under control. The whole thing could tank in a matter of months if this escalates.
The thing is, if you are earning nearly 1/2 mil a year, you are, I hope, saving a lot for the inevitable rainy day. In Europe we still get rainy days fairly often and unless you are in the minority of very well paid European pilots, the rainy days are going to be a lot less pleasant. The fella a few posts above at Wizz is a case in point. I have watched with horror my former Thomas Cook colleagues whooping with delight at getting these jobs where they will be earning 1/2 or 2/3 what they were on before. The few winners appear to be those prepared to leave Europe altogether. As CW247 neatly set out, in my career, now ended, we have sold ourselves up the river and when we weren't doing it ourselves, we had our own lazy government and the ideological European Union doing it for us.