[Porsche-O-Phile]

Agreed, the real exploitation occurs in the regional airlines. Corporate, factional, charter and the like typically pay a lot better - this is market driven and I suspect the result of having to compensate flight crews for being shackled to a pager their entire life (24/7/365 in some cases). I looked into it a few years ago (I had a lead to fly charter in a Lear 35 before I got hired to fly cargo) but that was the deal - I'd have been paid okay, but if the pager went off, I MUST have been at the aircraft within 1 hour, ready to fly. 3AM, holidays, whatever. This severely limits one's options. Can't go off camping for a weekend, can't drive to Phoenix or Vegas for the day, etc. Can't have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner (8 hour "bottle-to-throttle" rule, if the pager goes off after you've had a sip, technically you're illegal). So it's a tradeoff for the guys doing that life. You're never really "off duty" and never really have your life to yourself. But that's what I'd have been paid for. I ultimately decided "not worth it" for the salary and the "privilege" of sitting in the right seat for god-knows-how-long. It was an okay deal, but not a great deal.

The regionals are experts at "carrot dangling" - particularly to the young hotshot guys with the big egos. They all want to be "shiny jet" guys and the airlines know it. So they let 'em have their shiny jet but they pay 'em crap and treat 'em like crap (they whip a lot of those guys VERY hard with respect to their duty schedules and time away from home - I know of a couple where FOs have to buy their own uniforms, charts, etc. - on their $15k-$20k per year salaries) But they get away with it because there's an endless supply of expendable labor in the form of kids with "1000-and-1" (1000 hours T/T and 100 hours multiengine) who want to brag to their buddies about flying an EMB or an RJ, and enjoy an occasional jump seat trip or buddy pass. The airlines are all-too-happy to do this, as it helps them cut costs and perpetuate the "fare wars" which go on every other week.

Naturally in a downturn like this, corporate and charter take a beating (as do the regional and major airlines). Never mind that the businesses that buy corporate jets can own them for very little (they're allowed to deduct the depreciation on the aircraft annually and there are an awful lot of companies who carry a HELL of a lot more tax liability every year than the amortized cost of a jet or two). I know a guy (a former flight student of mine, actually) who brokered an acquisition of a Lear 45 and a King Air for a client of his. Their costs of owning the aircraft are NOTHING except operating costs due to the tax write-offs. It effectively costs this company ZERO to own the aircraft except when they actually use it (fuel, crew cost, maintenance, etc.) But naturally perception is everything and corporate jets are seen as "evil" and "ostentatious" by the idiot masses out there (reference the recent firestorm over GM/Ford/Chrysler CEOs "daring" to show up in DC in their aircraft).

It's truly a screwy industry. I honestly think it's one of the toughest and grittiest industries to make a living in (along with construction of course), but the actual flying part is addictively zen-like. There's nothing like it on earth and I'm a very, very fortunate individual to have been touched by it and be one of the few who's able to do it occasionally (albeit not as much as I'd like or to the extent a lot of the other guys here do).