jetset

If your lawyer friend didn't want to be at the office so much he should have become a pilot.

When the regulations require doctors and lawyers to work less than 100/month and 30/7 then people can whine about them not working enough.

Ski Patrol

What????????? I hope you are not insinuating pilots only work 100/month and 30/7

1Seat 1Engine

Let's not lose sight of the fact that airlines only exist if they can economically move people from point a to point b. i.e. the company exists only because of the customers, not the employees.

The "stick it to the customer to keep our pay higher" attitude will not win out in the long run.

Your statement above is telling the customer that he needs to accept less choices and pay more so that the two guys in the front of the airplane can move from the 95th up to th 97th percentile of highest paid people in the country.

XtremeF150

I could be wrong, but considering most reserve lines have a minimum of 12 days off, I can't see someone with the seniority to make $250,000 a year working 20 days a month with a major airline.[/QUOTE]

Alright, I have to admit I am one of those guys. I sit reserve with -8- days off a month and make about 30,000 a year.....that is GROSS PAY! To top it off I do this in the left seat. The really sad thing is that the same Captains flying the same airplanes 15 years ago made the same dollars...NOT considering "Today's Dollars".

To think I was actually having a good day till you guys made me think about that!

Darmtn

Sorry engineering major. Not worth the time. I hate grammer didn't know this was a grammer test. Got enought of that from my 80 year old english teacher grandmother. See ya.

mike734

Sorry Darmtn. I think I agree with what you are saying but your spelling and sentence structure make it impossible for me to really understand. Can you please edit your post? I mean really, just read your post out loud and see if you can make sense of it. BTW I am not trying to break your balls. I truly would like to know what you said.

bla bla bla

Great quote, This seems to be common sense, why are we not pushing more for this? You got my vote, if I was part of alpa.

Whistlin' Dan

It would take more than an extraordinary leader. It would take an extraordinary membership. Unfortunately, ALPA doesn't have one. In fact, it's not even a union in the true sense of the word. I say that because it's members (and I'm one of them) are notoriously self-serving when it comes to labor matters.

I agree that the idea of a National wage scale has merit. But to implement that, you'd almost have to have a national seniority list. That is something that NO responsible CEO is going to have forced down his throat. What you would likely see are failing or poorly-performing airlines being broken up and sold piecemeal, with routes, gates, and equipment being transferred to non-union startups.

Almost EVERY cost associated with running an airline becomes negotiable when that airlines existence is being threatened by falling revenue and/or profits. Aircraft leases are renegotiated, delivery dates forestalled, fuel and airport taxes are abated, and wages and working conditions are re-written for both union and non-union employees. In order for a National seniority list to have any teeth, you'd have to have pilots who are so rabidly committed to that ideal that they'd rather see their airline disappear from the face of the earth, than to take a 10% pay cut. And that's not gonna happen...

They say that the airline business runs on about a 7-year cycle. What constitutes a "lucrative professional career" runs on about a 10-15 year cycle. In the mid-late 50's, a newly-minted engineer could name his price on the job market. But by the time the first Apollo missions were being flown, many engineers were lucky to be driving ice-cream trucks. The same cycle applies to pilots. In the mid-late 60's, guys (and ONLY guys) were being hired into legacy cockpits with 200 hrs and a commercial liicense. Ten years later, the job market was awash with pilots, while engineering was again a great business to be in.

Hang tough. In another couple of years, this'll be a cool job to have again...

mike734

Amen. Did you ever notice by the time you get in to something, (a hot stock, real estate, a hot profession, a fad) it's over? The time to start anything is not at the top. The time to buy or start is the bottom.

This may be the bottom with respect to the airline profession. I see a bright future. Good luck to us all.

robthree

We're gonna need it!