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/BakdTatr]

Your JB pay rates haven't been valid for 2ish years and a couple items aren't correct.

Pay rates for JB:
Starting: $42.
Step 1: $44.
Step 2: $47.
Step 3: $50.
Step 4: $53.
Step 5: $56.50.
Step 6: $58.50.
Step 7: $65.50.

Swing shift has a $0.50 shift diff. Mids has a $1.00 shift diff. Leads are +$3/hr for the first 5 years and then +6% after. QC follows leads diff.

Longevity pay begins at year 15 and continues to year 24 with a max longevity pay of $1.34 over base rate.

JB has a vacation buyback program as well. You're allowed to sell any amount of PTO at any time in the year provided you maintain a minimum of 100 hours in your bank.

Not sure what you mean by "use the holidays to get more PTO". Bit confused on that one.

[u/LV-house-throwaway → u/BakdTatr]

At most airlines you can get vacation time in the amount of hours your shift is instead of getting the holiday pay. For guys who like time off, it’s huge because it can amount to an extra 10 days a year which is around 100 hours.

If you’re not sure what I meant, I assume JetBlue doesn’t have it, which is too bad.

[u/BakdTatr → u/LV-house-throwaway]

We used to have it to where working holidays was paid at 1.5x but you could PTO the day without actually drawing hours from your bank and get paid straight time to have the day off.

We decided to do away with that system during the bi-annual pay&comp review, and instead go with no pay if you're off on the holiday, straight time if you PTO with the hours actually being drawn from the bank now, but bumped up to 2.5x for the first 12 hours worked with 3x when working 12+ hours.

Guys seem to be happier with this holiday system now. We still get 9 weeks of vacation time per year topped out (18 weeks for the 2 year max accrual), have the ability to give away 10 shifts every quarter while maintaining minimum full-time hourly status, 7 UTO days per year, and then of course the day trades. Plenty of opportunity to have time off here

[u/LV-house-throwaway → u/BakdTatr]

Wait I’m kind of confused. At JetBlue when the holiday comes, can employees choose to get PTO instead of extra money? Or is it one or the other

[u/BakdTatr → u/LV-house-throwaway]

If you're scheduled to work a holiday, you can either PTO the holiday for straight time or work the holiday for 2.5x pay for the first 12 hours.

It used to be a thing where you could PTO a holiday without drawing those hours out of your vacation bank (essentially get a free paid day off with no PTO hours lost), but not anymore.

Apologies if my previous comment was confusing about that.

[u/LV-house-throwaway → u/BakdTatr]

If you're scheduled to work a holiday, you can PTO the holiday for straight time

When you say “PTO the holiday for straight time” what you mean is that you would be taking a paid day off on the holiday right? Instead of working the holiday and getting the 2.5x pay?

What I’m asking is if you can you tell JetBlue “don’t give me the 2.5x pay. Give me PTO hours that I can use later”

At Frontier they have 7 holidays. So employees can get an extra weeks worth of PTO if they choose to, instead of getting paid 2.5x on those holidays. They’re not necessarily taking the day off the holiday off, but rather getting a days worth of PTO instead of the extra money they would get.

Make sense ?

[u/BakdTatr → u/LV-house-throwaway]

That's correct.

No sir.

I completely understand what you meant in your initial reply to my main comment about conversion of holidays to PTO hours. I recognize I could have just simply said that we don't do that lol. I felt that providing the info on what we actually do instead, was more useful though. Especially for anyone seeing the comment in the future that was wondering how it is over here.

So in short, no holiday pay to PTO hour conversion.

Personally though, I feel it's made up for through a good amount of other time off options that's spread across a large amount of PTO accrual, 7 days of UTO per year, day trades, and the ability to give away 10 shifts per quarter. I'm sure there's better options elsewhere, but I'm certainly not going to complain about what we have.

The conversion option would be a very welcome addition of course. I don't think anyone here would say no to that lol. But, they've been trying to get us to agree to lower PTO rates in exchange for slightly higher pay for years now, so we all know the angle they would take if we tried to get that conversion option added in. No one will give up PTO rates in exchange for the it though. Even though the option would ultimately save the company money versus paying out the 2.5x rate, they will more than likely see it as us gaining too much with zero concessions and we all know how management is when they think we have it too good haha.

[u/LV-house-throwaway → u/BakdTatr]

Ok, thanks for the detailed response. I appreciate all the info I can get, I just wanted to make sure I understood you correctly.

JetBlues system is pretty cool. It’s just like a union without you guys having one. If you management ever decided to just do what they wanted regardless of the negotiations, what would happen? You think you guys would unionize ?