Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy filing has prompted at least one community contributor to refresh a publicly available major airline compensation comparison spreadsheet, offering pilots navigating a shifting hiring landscape a consolidated resource for evaluating career options across the legacy, low-cost, and ultra-low-cost carrier segments. The spreadsheet aggregates first officer and captain pay scales, estimated total compensation when flying contractual minimums at the 10- and 20-year longevity marks, domicile bases, Glassdoor employee satisfaction ratings, and direct links to carrier hiring portals. The data draws from publicly available contract information supplemented by crowdsourced pilot submissions, making it a living document dependent on community participation to remain current.
The timing of the update is significant. Spirit's Chapter 11 filing displaces hundreds of pilots who now enter the job market simultaneously, many of them mid-career captains and senior first officers holding ATP certificates with jet turbine time. For those pilots, and for regional pilots still evaluating upgrade paths to the majors, side-by-side compensation data spanning a 20-year career arc provides meaningful signal beyond headline new-hire rates. The difference between carriers becomes most apparent at minimum guarantee projections over time, where contractual protections, profit-sharing structures, and scope provisions compound into substantially different lifetime earning profiles.
The broader context is a major airline hiring environment that, while cooler than the 2022–2023 peak, remains active enough that pilots have genuine choices to make. United, Delta, American, and Southwest continue to post openings, and carriers such as Alaska, Hawaiian post-merger integration, and the cargo majors including FedEx and UPS represent additional tracks with distinct compensation and lifestyle tradeoffs. Resources like this spreadsheet serve a practical function in an industry where pay scales are technically public through union contract postings but are rarely assembled in a format that enables direct comparison across carriers and seniority points.
The contributor's consideration of extending the project to regional carriers would add further utility. Regional compensation has risen dramatically since the 2022 contract cycle, with some Part 121 regional carriers now offering first officer starting pay that rivals or exceeds what legacy majors paid a decade ago. A parallel regional comparison would be particularly relevant for CFIs and military transition pilots evaluating entry-point decisions, as well as for current regional pilots weighing whether to wait for a specific major or accept an offer in hand. Community-maintained tools of this type, when kept current and verified against actual contract language, fill a genuine gap in the publicly available resources for pilots making high-stakes career decisions.