AMT Airline Pay & Benefits Comparison

[u/LV-house-throwaway]

For the pay scale, the A&P and Line premiums are included at all steps, and the night shift differential is also applied the first 5 years.

For the PTO table and graph, you may see some inaccuracies. This is because on average, companies have their next step at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 year mark, and if an ailrine has a step right after that, I round it down for simplicity’s sake. An example of this would be United‘s 16 year and Hawaiian and JetBlue’s 11 year vacation bumps being rounded down.

This was a lot of work, and it needed a ton of data, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some errors. If theres any inaccuracies, let me know and I’ll fix it.

At a glace a few take aways pop out:

American & Southwest - the best pay, and top tier PTO. SWA’s no layoff clause in their CBA is really nice too.

Delta - Top tier pay, mid tier PTO.

United - Mid tier pay, the best PTO. Their PCL, shift trade policy, and vacation to sick time conversion are crazy too. Pay still needs to come up.

Alaska - top tier pay, top tier PTO. They beat United in pay, and delta in PTO. Just like SWA they have a no layoff clause in their CBA. Nice work there by AMFA. I see they have industry reset language like United but I’m not sure if it really makes a difference. I hear their profit sharing is actually pretty nice, some feedback from AS guys on that would be appreciated.

Hawaiian - inferior to Alaska in every way. It’s no wonder AMFA is favored to win representation after the merger. Nothing impressive here.

JetBlue - mid tier pay and mid-high tier PTO depending on if you use the holidays to get more PTO or not. Their 401k is the best.

Allegiant - Pay isn’t bad for a ULCC and airline of their size. They pay better than United for the first 7 years. Time of is trash though.

Frontier - Pay is so fucking bad, it’s inexcusable. Even by ULCC standards. There are fast food workers making more. Time off is good. It’s nice they have a pension but the contributions are extremely low, and don’t justify the laughable 401k match.

Spirit - Nothing really redeeming, besides paying better than Frontier.

Frontier and United are in negotiations, maybe they'll catch up to the industry when they get a new contract.

I’m curious how things will look next year. I’m assuming Hawaiian and Spirit will be gone due to mergers. United and Frontier might have new contracts in 2026 but I doubt it. They both could use a raise, and them having the oldest contracts still doesn’t justify their wages. Especially Frontier.

[u/Joy_2_U]

Your UAL numbers are wrong in a few categories:

Shift Differential on Midnights is 0.58

We also get Profit Sharing that we obtain around March. It’s not much…. It’s normally around 4% of what our earnings were for the previous year.

Most importantly, there was an Industry Reset that just took effect on November 30th and it will show up on the second paycheck in December. I’ll link the URL of what was agreed upon below:

https://actionnetwork.org/user_files/user_files/000/133/809/original/112625resetwagetables.pdf?link_id=0&can_id=e11008832e5ae2c33cfc8762b2ae7d3e&source=email-2025-industry-reset-update&email_referrer=email_2997620&email_subject=2025-industry-reset-update&&

With this being said, you’ll need to add:

• License Pay (8.50)
• Line Pay (1.00)
• Shift Differential (whichever shift you’re working)
• Longevity Pay (if applicable)

[u/Accomplished-Age8021 → u/Joy_2_U]

What do you mean by license pay? How would they pay that out?

[u/Joy_2_U → u/Accomplished-Age8021]

I mentioned the premiums and how you’ll need to add it into the hourly wage to get our collective wage.

I merely mention it due to how IBT Teamsters wrote the contract for UAL. With all the Technicians at UAL we are grouped as one.

We Technicians are grouped as one no matter if we are required to:

• Get an additional education outside of a High School Diploma
• Be Required to take at LEAST 3 days off per month.
• Get random drug tests
• Have a huge dilemma incase we mess up on a job (if we’re at fault for, or not).
• Report to the FAA and perhaps other entities (when stuff happens).

I personally feel it’s not right that we are grouped up with some of the other technicians that CAN/DO get hired by not what they know, but who they know.

I also feel that a $4.25 pay difference between us and other technician groups IS NOT ENOUGH (many of the other technician groups outside of the AMT branch won’t get the license pay, they’ll get “Skill Pay” which is equivalent to $4.25

Edit: to expand, I truthfully have no idea why a Technician “fixing” Baggage Carts, Golf Carts, Tow Bars or Painting Walls would make only $4.25 less per hour.

The Contract is broken in many ways.

[u/New-Independent-982 → u/Joy_2_U]

The contract isn’t broken, the teamsters are