re: So I just met Nick Fairley

I'm not a 100% sure. This seemed the quickest link I could dig up.

LINK

One guy I flew with years back was married to a controller, she graduated with an art degree. That was the first I heard of the good salaries. I had the Newark "cab" supervisor on my jumpseat a few months ago and he told me about making 120k in year two. The catch, the washout rate at that facility, and many of the new York ones, is around 40-50%.But the pay is fitting for the demand. He seemed desperate to get more people. There is variety, you can be at an airport like PDK in Atlanta, at big Atlanta dealing with me or doing the high altitude stuff which for Atlanta is in Hampton GA.

Here's the faa produced manual that both old and controllers work off. As old you get some of it memorized. Controllers are kind of forced to get most of it memorized. The faa requires both of us to know it. But I'm too busy posting on the rant to study that crap anymore.
LINK /

Man I appreciate this more than you know. I'll be lurking over there no doubt

This is a graph I see thrown around a good bit. Not sure of the accuracy. I imagine a quick FAA Google could provide a better result and more information

CSB. No, seriously, cool story. I'm curious, what route were y'all flying that he was on?

Since you are Delta, are you based out of ATL or somewhere else?

And no, you can't leave. Too few Auburn posters on this site as is, we can't have them voluntarily leaving just to get a new name.

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TheRig

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I'll be looking to join the aviation industry in some shape or fashion

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No more trips to the Caribbean for me i see.

20/20 however you can get there, contacts, glasses, Lasik, etc are all fine.

Yeah I am ATL based. You can be here, Detroit, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York (all 3 airports), Cincinnati (probably close that soon) or Salt Lake City.

ATL is the biggest base. For logistics reasons you only find certain planes in certain bases but they'll mostly fly throughout the system, wherever marketing/network says go. You only fly one type because the differences in systems and procedures warrant that, except on the 757/767 we fly both because the cockpits are mostly identical. But you'll fly any of the planes your trained on, if you have 170 MD-88s/90s then they're all identical and you do an out and back on one and then swap to another, etc.

We run a seniority system, first guy hired is #1 and on down the list to #12,400+. #1 gets first choice on plane and base and Captain or FO/Copilot position, and then in the individual "category" say Airbus A320 FO ATL, you bid your trips, days off, vacation, overtime, double time, etc. Pay is on years of service, tops out at 12 years, but we negotiate contracts and usually each year there is a raise. Domestic is 4 and 3 day trips, some 2 and 1 day, a few 5. International is mostly 6 (4 flights over 6 days), a few 3, a bunch of 9-12 on the 747.

As to learning to fly, I did it in a Cessna 172 at a local airport. Instructed students at Auburn in 172s. Did some flying in the Auburn corporate planes (back then King Airs) to do recruiting especially after the IB. Back then we would either pick up the recruits (not allowed now I don't think) or take coaches around. Or the basketball team which back then required 3-4 planes. They moved to Citation jets years ago, N10AU I think is one of them. You'd check on with a controller and say your call sign and other pilots would say War Eagle. One time the controller and MOB was emphatic that we needed to tell the coaches about a recruit in town, that was funny. When recruiting you'd get some where and see other planes that said UF or UT etc on their call sign, I wonder if we were after the same guy.

We do a lot of Auburn charters here. They used the 747 I know in 2010 for the NCG. They use 757s and 767s for the football team. The pilot that flew them to the NCG last year was actually an Alabama football player years ago. My Auburn buddy did a baseball charter out of ARK (XNA) to MGM in the middle of the night on a 717.

I'm on the 717. Not sure where you are now but it's worth the jump. If money is the issue look on airlinepilotcentral and multiply the rates out at 72-75 hrs a month, multiply it by 13 months not 12 because of profit sharing and know 15% automatically into 401k based on that whether you contribute or not.

If you want to fly and things get busy 87 credit hours is the norm on 12-14 days off. I am averaging 94 a month this year in pay on 50-60 hours of flying and you can do that as a new hire as well. It's easy to get 10.5 hours for 2 hours of flying here. A few months ago I could pull 21 hours for an atl-chattanooga overnight.

Nothing is perfect but the work rules, future and QOL in short order are not even comparable to my RJ life. Not even remotely close.

Btw, we have a bunch that live in Auburn and drive once a week to work. Some sit reserve in Auburn and do okay, reserve varies depending on the situation but you can be at the point of only one or two trips a month.

It's ironic that the University has for years and years wanted to kill it's "truck driving" school. I guess the flight program embarrasses them.. Until they use the jet to go to Atlanta.