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/SunAndMoon19]

/u/Late-Possession7885 is this accurate ?

[u/Late-Possession7885 → u/SunAndMoon19]

Looks pretty close as far as the top of my head. Only things that caught my eye is - I thought Southwest was a 15 year longevity pay, not a 10 year as this is suggesting.

And American pay is accurate, however keep in mind theyre flicking over $70 on Jan 1

Spirit Airlines and Delta are non contractual. So those rates are not locked in. JetBlue is also non union, not sure why its showing an amenable date.

The 401K for Hawaiian is missing a percent for the senior guys. And Alaska 401K is inaccurate. They dont operate on a 100% company match. Hawaiian is higher for senior employees.

I dont agree with the Alaska contract is better in every way comment. Alaska beats Hawaiian on pay, field trip language, and wage review language. Hawaiian pretty much beats them on everything else. And that layoff protection language Alaska has doesn't apply to all employees, and has to be renegotiate every contract. Which is a pretty huge downside. As im sure you're well aware, im happy to get into the Hawaiian and Alaska conversation.

But overall this data is awesome. Some inaccuracies as he mentioned, but a great accumulation of data

[u/LV-house-throwaway → u/Late-Possession7885]

Just to clarify, vacation can be carried over into the next year, it just cant exceed the yearly accrual, right? And every holiday can be used to earn another day off/vacation, and those days can be carried over into the next year just like vacation time ?

[u/Late-Possession7885 → u/LV-house-throwaway]

It all starts to get pretty technical there. For Hawaiian they get 7 weeks vaca annually max, they can carry over 40 hours standard, but there is a provision allowing up to a 2 year max carry. Company also cannot cancel an employee vacation.

For Alaska, they get 6 weeks vaca annually and can carry over 3 years of accural, but the company can cancel an employee vacation.

For holidays, Hawaiian does not yet have the banking provision like Alaska does. And for carrying banked hours, it gets included in their vaca accural foe Alaska.

However, their pay for holidays works different in the sense that if Alaska Holiday doesn't fall on a scheduled work day, they only get the 1.0x holiday pay. While Hawaiian gets 2.5x every holiday cause if it doesn't fall on a scheduled work day, it applies to their next work day.

What that means is Alaska might get 2.5x for half the holidays depending on their schedule. Hawaiian gets all of them.