PreFlight

Welcome to the Rotate Newsletter. This newsletter provides insight for the aspiring aviator who wishes to join the commercial airline industry. This newsletter provides the reader with the advantages and disadvantages of each airline. The goal is to help the reader determine the best airline suited to the needs of his or her aspirations and family. Today, Rotate will cover Part 2 of Delta Air Lines, Soft Pay.

Most airlines pay plus or minus 1% of each other. Delta, being the first to come to a contract agreement with its pilot group, established the baseline. So no matter where you go as far as a Legacy carrier, the baseline pay really is the same. However, each airline offers different forms of soft pay. Premium, Green Slips, Extended Duty Pay, Short Call Credit, Holiday Pay—the list goes on. How the pilot qualifies for these is different for each company, with different associated triggers. This is where airlines can stand out in terms of salary. A word of caution here: these forms of pay can sometimes adversely affect your quality of life. Reroute pay is great, until you are rerouted into the next day, extending your trip into your son’s baseball game.

Premium Pay

The first type of Soft pay that comes to everyone’s mind is Premium pay. This pay is utilized by the company to entice the pilot to fly a rotation that the company can’t otherwise staff. At Delta, this is called a Greenslip (GS). GSs are offered to pilots on their days off and are proffered in seniority order. This does not mean that the junior guy is out of luck, just that the senior guy gets the first opportunity. Once the senior pilot takes his or her first GS, or GS #1, he or she goes to the bottom of the list. On the next available rotation, if everyone junior to him or her receives an opportunity to a GS and passes it goes back to the senior guy as GS #2. This is a fair process, and as long as multiple GSs are available, everyone gets a turn.

GS pay is essentially double pay for that trip. If the rotation is worth 10:30, as a GS, it is now worth 21 hours of pay for line holders. As you can imagine, this can be very lucrative for pilots. But there is a catch: line holders must fly to what is called the GS trigger. This trigger is a credit hour that varies every month, depending on the average line value for that month. The reason for this trigger is to ensure that pilots don’t just drop their trips and then pick them back up at double pay. Which goes into the question: why would a company not staff to ensure that GSs are minimized? Unlike forecasted scheduling that takes place in PBS, GSs are last-minute trips. These trips manifest from either bad weather, pilots timing out, or as simple as pilot illness. These occurrences are unavoidable for all companies, regardless of staffing.

This sounds great for the line holder, what about reserves? This is one of the biggest advantages of Delta; reserves get GSs as well. The difference is that the trip is paid differently; it's worth the trip credit and a payback (PB) day for each day flown. Remembering back to the scheduling newsletter, reserves have a certain number of Long Call (LC) days each month. When a reserve works on his or her off day via a GS, they receive a PB day for each day flown on that was originally a day off. The PB day is then placed on the pilot’s next LC day and is considered off. However, this new off day is still considered as pay towards reserve guarantee. Each GS trip that is flown on off days has that pay applied on top of the monthly reserve guarantee. If a pilot’s monthly guarantee is 72 hours, he or she flies a GS worth 10:30, that pilot will now receive 82:30 of pay for the month. Regardless of how many LC trips the reserve operates, the pay will not be below this number. The more GSs the reserve gets, the fewer LC days he or she works, and the more money the reserve makes. This can add up to a large sum of money if it is a high GS month.

Rotation Pay

At Delta, rotations are built with different forms of additional Soft pay. The two most common are Extended Duty Pay (EDP) and Sit pay. EDP is pay that is given when a pilot exceeds 10 hours of duty on a given day. Every minute over 10 hours is a minute of pay. Sit pay is pay given to a pilot when he or she has to sit for over two hours between legs. This is paid out at 2:1. A three-hour sit equals 30 minutes of pay. These two pays alone can boost a two-day rotation from 10:30 to 13 or 14 hours of pay. This additional pay is on top of the guarantee for reserves.

Holiday pay is for days flown over holidays. This is pay above guarantee, and each day is 5:15 of pay. Depending on the holiday, it may equal 1 or 2 days of holiday pay.

Reroute pay is just that: pay pilots receive when they are rerouted from their original rotation. Reroutes are utilized by the company to fill a flight that needs a pilot at the last minute. Delta prides itself on being an on-time airline. To do that, the company will sacrifice a trip, leaving later to fill the gator closest to the boat. This creates the reroute and, oftentimes, a GS for that later trip. Reroute pay is the cost of doing this. When a pilot is rerouted, he or she receives 150% of the rerouted block time for the first day. If the pilot has not returned to the original rotation by the layover, the pilot receives 200% pay the following day. The 200% remains in place until the pilot returns to the original rotation or is released. Line holders and reserves both receive this pay incentive, reserves are paid above guarantee.

One form of Soft pay specific to reserves is Short Call credit. If a pilot is placed on Short Call and he or she doesn’t receive a trip, the pilot is paid one hour above the guarantee for his or her time.

One final type of Soft pay is crave pay. This is utilized for the last day of rotation; if the final leg extends past 2331, the pilot receives two hours of additional pay. Just like all the other forms of Soft pay, this is paid on top of the guarantee for reserves. If the leg extends past 0200, it is paid a full 5:15 but is no longer considered carve.

Brake Set

Delta Air Lines has a tremendous amount of Soft pay that it offers to its pilots. Keep in mind that each one of these pays also adds to the 401K direct contribution amount as well as the profit-sharing percentage. A pilot’s total compensation can increase thousands of dollars each year thanks to Delta’s Soft pay incentives. Next issue, Rotate will continue to explore Delta Air Lines.

1  John Collins has over 16 years of professional aviation experience. He currently serves as a Captain for a major airline. Previously, he served in the United States Marine Corps, flying AV-8B Harriers. John holds a Masters in Aeronautics.