Originally Posted by
tracon
From the article......
"The salary range for Canadian pilots is roughly $40,000 for a new hire to more than $200,000 for an experienced captain.
//
A very experienced captain will clock in closer to $400k/yr.
What portion of AC's flying workforce is making $40-60K, and what portion is making $300-400K? I'm not pushing a point here, I don't know this answer, and I bet someone on the forum knows considerably more than I do on that detail.
Originally Posted by
tracon
Whenever the Canadian dollar is weak, talk of the brain drain gets stronger.
How many actually follow through is a different story. Some do. Most don't.
The article claims around 10% are pursuing a move to the US, though I may need someone to walk me through how they claim to be pursuing E2-B visas to work as pilots.
Originally Posted by
Transpacificflyer
A bigger pay cheque means more tax is paid. Considering the "progressive" tax rate Canada has, earning more isn't always worth it. My own experience was negative. I didn't keep much of a pay/bonus increase. As others have pointed out, more time off would be of greater value. A combination of both should provide a sweet spot.
I don't see the pilots asking for "no raise and more vacation time", so presumably they as a body have decided they want the money, even the portion of them who come anywhere near the highest tax bracket.
Originally Posted by
songsc
It's interesting that everyone is asking for more salary, but few seem to care about the bigger picture.
When Canada was in a better economical situation, no one seemed to care about why Canadians were making more than their counterparts in some other countries, and now no one seems to really care about why they are making less.
Was there a point where Canadian airline pilots were being paid more than their American opposite numbers? I honestly don't know this answer, I'm really asking. A quick search shows me that AC's starting first-year narrowbody pilots off at $56K, while Alaska and the US3 are starting similarly-experienced-and-rated pilots off at $90+.
Originally Posted by
songsc
Everyone wants to get a bigger slice of pie without making the pie bigger it seems...
I guess I need to prepare to pay for higher airfares and expect less AP benefits.
If I recall correctly, Canadian regulations limit a pilot to 1,000 flying hours per year. So, an experienced Dash pilot (generously) making $60K "costs" $60 per flight hour, but in the hilarious hypothetical where their pay suddenly doubled, that'd be an additional $60/hr that - I agree with your assessment - will come out of the customer's pocket, and not out of the corporation's billion-plus dollars in 2023 profit.
So, on a 1-hour flight from YOW to YTZ, our hypothetical newly-enriched Dash Fatcat will shake his poor passengers down for an additional sixty bucks; assuming an 80% flight load, that's 96 cents per person. Times two pilots, so call it a little under two bucks.
If you run the same math at the other end of the spectrum, on the most-senior, most-experienced veteran taking a 777 to Australia, $400/hr works out to about twenty bucks per passenger on a not-quite-full 77L to Sydney (plus a copilot and two cruise pilots, but a 5-year FO is making less than half of that senior captain's $400K) so for the sake of argument let's call it $20/pax for the boss and $15/pax for each of the other three, grand total of $65. I didn't bother to pro-rate by cabin class, but as you can see I'm on a bit of an egalitarian kick tonight.
I don't know about you, but I *want* the men and women whose first job is to keep me from plummeting out of the skies to be well-looked-after, and I sure as sugar don't want my plane flown by whoever has to get hustled in to replace them - from flight schools here in Canada, OR lured away from foreign airlines - if AC's existing pilots start leaving for better paychecks down south. It's not like we've got 10,000-hour 777 captains hanging around outside Home Depot trying to pick up a day's work.
While we're talking about that extra sixty bucks - or eighty, or ninety, if you want to talk total-cost-of-employment - what do you think happens to airfares if AC ends up 200 pilots short, and can't maintain schedule?