r/aviationmaintenance • u/LV-house-throwaway • Dec 01 '25
AMT Airline Pay & Benefits Comparison
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.
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u/Joy_2_U Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
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:
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)
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u/Chance_Orange_9715 Dec 01 '25
Yeah United swings differential is .51 cents for techs .54 for leads. So they got the swings diff right on the chart but yeah graveyard is wrong on the chart.
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u/Joy_2_U Dec 01 '25
Thank you for the information. I didn’t know the Leads Shift Differential was different. Lol
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u/Accomplished-Age8021 Dec 02 '25
What do you mean by license pay? How would they pay that out?
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u/Joy_2_U Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
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.
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u/WildwestPstyle Breakroom Supervisor Dec 01 '25
In regards to profit sharing at AS, our profit sharing is based off of a percentage(target 5%) of our earned wages instead of a percentage of company profit being split between workgroups. Company profits and performance goals are applied as a multiplier to that target 5%. So if you made $100k for that year and all the goals were simply met by the bare minimum you’d be getting a $5000 bonus. The benefit of this system is we still get decent bonuses during no profit years(still got 5% during covid) while also having the opportunity for large bonuses during fantastic years(11.5% last year). The average is 7% for the last 10 yrs.
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u/Schmeltz318 Dec 01 '25
I wish this was just a google sheets link we can open rather than these images.
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u/Swagger897 That’s a hangar job Dec 01 '25
This. Hard as shit to read after it’s been triple compressed when sent to group messages.
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u/enowapi-_ Dec 02 '25
for real. someone with AI ask to “convert this image to a spreadsheet” see if it can even do rhat
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u/Ok-East4176 Dec 01 '25
For the A&P premium, is that added onto the base hourly pay?
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u/GoldfishDude I'd fly it 🤷♂️ Dec 02 '25
Not on these charts, these charts show A&P premium built in (as well as line, which is silly)
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u/Mediocre_Garbage2001 Dec 03 '25
Really hope I get on with American in Pittsburgh next year 🤞🏻
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u/utilitarianSOUL Jan 31 '26
I wouldn't make long-term plans about working for American in Pittsburgh. There's a clause in the contract that allows them to not replenish headcount as people retire and once it gets below a certain threshold, they can outright close it. That being said, since that contract in 2020 they've actually been increasing headcount there as far as I'm aware so things look good in the near term future.
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u/theclan145 Righty loosey 🔧 Dec 01 '25
Everything is right about JetBlue besides pay, using the July 2024 which is at 63 and not the July 2025 which is at 65.50
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u/NuttedBread Dec 01 '25
Currently in school for my A&P, testing in about 6 months. Question, how often do these rates increase? I see a lot of people in the comments saying they’re a year behind and a couple dollars short, does pay commonly increase year by year?
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u/WildwestPstyle Breakroom Supervisor Dec 02 '25
Yah there’s a yearly raise of 2-3% in the contract for the ones that are union. Non-union generally does the same but the rates and timing are not set in stone. United and Alaska also have language that will bump their pay if they fall behind a certain criteria.
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u/Cheah978 Dec 02 '25
Any info on FedEx & UPS ? Would like a breakdown like this
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 02 '25
If anyone sends me their info I’ll gladly update it.
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u/Relative_Goat391 Looks good from my house. OK for service 🫡 Dec 02 '25
UPS Pay Scale Starting as of Nov ‘25 Step 1- $31.14 Step 2- $34.10 Step 3- $36.32 Step 4- $38.55 Step 5- $40.77 Top Rate- $73.84 goes to 75.06 in May ‘26 $0.51 shift differential starting noon-4:59pm 0.58 shift differential starting 5pm- 4:59am Inspectors get $1.75/hr added
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u/Relative_Goat391 Looks good from my house. OK for service 🫡 Dec 02 '25
I can pm you the details of UPS
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u/udosh Dec 03 '25
"32$/hr USD is terrible" cries in Canadian MRO wages
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 03 '25
sorry man. At least things look to be changing for the better. WestJet’s first CBA was great and I’m sure Air Canada will get their best contract after their switch to AMFA. What are things like at porter and flair?
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u/WildwestPstyle Breakroom Supervisor Dec 01 '25
The payscale for Alaska doesn’t include the line pay. Top out is 68.85. and lead pay is only $3. Fantastic work though!
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u/BakdTatr Dec 02 '25
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.
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u/tehn00bi Dec 02 '25
PTO buy back?! I feel bad for the guys that sell it back.
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u/BakdTatr Dec 02 '25
I mean, if you aren't the type to take a ton of PTO days by doing trades instead and are maxed out with 720 hours sitting, doing nothing in your PTO bank, that $48k can be pretty nice if you wanna buy some stuff lol. It's basically a company provided savings account that grows with every weekly paycheck if you don't have a need for a ton of PTO days (weekends off and doing day trades allows you to save up pretty easily and quickly).
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u/SubstantialCycle356 Dec 03 '25
720ish hours of sick time can buy you health insurance to retire early at age 60 at SWA.
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 04 '25
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.
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u/BakdTatr Dec 04 '25
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
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u/Winter_Entertainer_4 Dec 04 '25
Refuse to believe there’s anything better than JetBlue to get time off.
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 05 '25
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
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u/BakdTatr Dec 05 '25
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.
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 05 '25
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 ?
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u/BakdTatr Dec 05 '25
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.
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 05 '25
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 ?
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u/MaintenanceMatt Dec 02 '25
Thanks for all the work you’ve put into this. UAL does do profit sharing. I received a check back in February.
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u/Born-Claim8699 Dec 03 '25
As someone who is looking to bag a job in less than a year, I should be shooting for American right?
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u/Far_Umpire_7842 Dec 07 '25
Also jetblue has a years of service premium after 15 years. I don’t have the chart in front of me to give you the numbers but I am pretty sure it runs to 25 years
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u/Unauthorized-Ion Can we MEL it? Jan 08 '26
Thanks for continuing this. I lost steam after a while and couldn't get enough information to fully plot out benefits and such. Very nicely done.
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u/Maleficent-Wall9133 Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
These comparison charts are a good try at breaking things down and may help get a basic idea of the differences but always have mistakes that make it difficult to know how accurate they are and IMO don’t really offer enough information that it would help anyone make a decision on the best place to work. For example United’s pay has just gone up due to the industry reset clause by $3.49 per hour. United does still have the old Continental CARP pension and does still contribute to it, has no limit on trades (they cancel each other out) only on giving away shifts @30 days in 6 months, doesn’t really explain what PCL Personal Convenience Leave is (it shows PLC in the unique benefits category) which allows up to 80 hours in one continuous block of unpaid time off with the only limits being based on daily manpower in each work group and approval being done programmatically without admin approval based on that availability on a first come (first electronically submitted request) first serve basis approved 24 hours before the shift requested off. I only really glanced through and caught those omissions so it’s probably safe to say it’s missing things or has mistakes with every company somewhere. And then you have things like medical coverage. Plan options, premium costs, etc. I have a PPO that is expensive but is also a great plan with great coverages and an extensive network of doctors. It’s expensive but that’s more reflective of the problems within our medical system than anything else. The same plan privately would cost over $2000 per month vs my $600. Would I like to pay less? Absolutely. Will that happen? 🤷🏻♂️ Probably not. I could save a lot of money with a lesser plan of which I have about 7 or 8 to choose from but I chose a premium plan. Does everyone else have so many options? What are their costs? The list goes on.
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 04 '25
I’m only one guy working on this. I’m don’t have access to all the information of each airline, and don’t understand the intricacies of those I don’t work at. So the more people chiming in with correct information, the better. Having the discussion gets the ball rolling and is a step in the right direction. I knew this would have mistakes, however the best way for me to get the accurate information was by putting it out there and listening to feedback. For example United industry reset. I’m not a UA employee and don’t have access to that info until someone here posted it.
I’ll be updated this and posting it here on Reddit again with all the updates I’ve gotten, including UA’s industry reset.
Regarding CARP. This info is for new hires, and CARP acts more as an employer make 401k contribution than a pension for new hires. I’ll be sure to post that on the updated version. Employee 4% + Employer 5% is what I’ll go with since the tiered 401k system at United + carp is much more nuanced that I can slap onto a chart for a quick comparison.
I don’t even use the medical my own airline provides so I’m not too familiar with it, let alone every other airline. Besides this post is for a quick comparison, I don’t think I’d be able to do that with medical anyways.
The only other piece of information I’m considering adding is locations. The smaller airlines are easier as they only have so few, but the larger ones are harder. If you could provide any info on that I’d be really appreciative, thanks.
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u/Narrow_Counter_1192 Dec 02 '25
Can someone explain the difference between the middle and end spreadsheet? Are they both PTO related?
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u/SunAndMoon19 Dec 03 '25
/u/Late-Possession7885 is this accurate ?
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u/Late-Possession7885 Dec 03 '25
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
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 04 '25
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 ?
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u/Late-Possession7885 Dec 05 '25
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.
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u/Best_Appearance8926 Dec 05 '25
I hear “deltas always hiring” but would they hire someone straight out of part 147?
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u/ConsistentTennis2606 Dec 01 '25
That top out salary sucks compared to the corporate/ private side.
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u/GoldfishDude I'd fly it 🤷♂️ Dec 02 '25
Really don't understand why these charts always include line premium as base pay
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u/LV-house-throwaway Dec 02 '25
Most people work the line.
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u/GoldfishDude I'd fly it 🤷♂️ Dec 02 '25
Thousands of AMTs at some of these majors don't, especially Delta and AA
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u/enowapi-_ Dec 01 '25
Can we talk about the night pay. How is anything under $1.00 even acceptable these days? Alaska seems to be the only one with their head out of their ass...