Crockrocket95

There is the "Well I don't use any social media..." crowd. That literally has no clue what other airlines are getting
There is the "I don't read ANY emails from the company or union..." And didn't even know where we are in the process...


I THINK that's a minority group, but hell, I only work with a small percentage. I hope its a minority view.

WHACKMASTER

Careful. You’re wresting with the TD of this forum.

OOfff

insulting people instead of discussing things SMDH

Hawaii50

How's that all working for you guys? You know pilot shortage and all, they should be practically throwing an industry leading contract at you?...........There's no pilot shortage at any of the majors. Flight schools are full and the bar will keep coming down but classes will be full.

The pilot shortage isn't a negotiating tactic IMO. What is? The fear of brand destruction, booking away, etc. You guys would seem to have a golden opportunity now with recent events and management in the line of fire.

RJSAviator76

You're right, the pilot shortage is not a negotiating tactic. It's the snapshot of the availability of qualified pilots and a reality when you look at the number of people interviewing and what it takes to get people to come in and retain them. We know what it is and whether they want to admit or not, the company does too even if they may be burying their head in the sand publicly.

I want to see SWAPA ratchet up the noise in public as we go into the summer months. I want the public to be worried whether or not we're gonna go on strike. I want them to book away from us and I want our C-Suite and Wall Street to feel it. I trust that they have a plan for it. I am concerned that our pilot group will do the same thing that Alaska and Delta did, which is fold at the first offer, but then again, I've been proven wrong before, and I hope I'm proven wrong this time.

And yes, you're right in that flight schools are full these days, but these new pilots are not ready yet. Now is the time to take advantage of it. How many times in your career have you heard "pilots are a dime a dozen, so why should I pay you x?" Not exactly the case anymore, or for a while anyway. Why shouldn't we take full advantage of it?

Scoop

Couple of big picture points to discuss:

The OPs original analysis can be very useful, but a few points need to be stressed. First off, these comparisons are limited in that they are taking a “snapshot” in time and extrapolating over a career. If you go back in time on these very forums you can probably find a similar analysis in which a Netjets Pilot did a similar career comparison and it showed Netjets Pilots coming out ahead of Delta Pilots. I’m sure it was accurate at the time, but the time was Deltas post BK low.

If you do want to compare career earnings you should look at DALs previous PWA, since Southwest is still one PWA cycle behind, or better yet wait until SW has a new deal and then make an apples to apples comparison on both companies new PWA. Keep in mind it’s still just a snapshot.

As far as the Pilot shortage - its here and it’s real, but one of the main reasons it’s here now is the crappy conditions 10-15 years ago that dissuaded many from entering the field. With many companies throwing money at starting out Pilots the training pipeline is booming - which down the road may once again result in an excess of Pilots.


Automation will eventually lower the need for Pilots, whether it’s Single Pilot Ops, or just 2 Captains on Ultra long haul flights who knows, but it’s coming.


My long rambling point is career comparisons can be useful especially for pattern bargaining but to put undo weight behind them in making career choices may not work out like one thinks.


Scoop - Just my 2 cents

Hawaii50

Good points and I hope you have the unity and will to take advantage. It's much better for the industry rather than having one group drag the others up like now. Keep in mind though, when you say Delta took the first offer; that offer came after 3 years of negotiations and table positions that incorporated changes from top to bottom. The mediator input and company's ultimately accepted offer were just the final push.

RJSAviator76

That's true, but it also happened last time too, both at Delta and at Southwest. Here, TA1 was grossly inadequate and was shot down. The TA2 took 10 months or so after and was infinitely better than the TA1, and we also had a complete change of leadership and NC at SWAPA.

Negotiations fatigue is real, and is highly rewarding for the company. We are also coming up on 3 years past amendable date. I keep track of my TFP's for the sakes of retro calculations. There are over 10,000 pilots on our seniority list. Some are high time flyers, some just fly the line and everything in between. Napkin math, if on average a pilot gets shorted $10,000 in retro, in our case that's a roughly 100 million gift to the company, and that's not taking into account any interest, opportunity cost, time value of money, etc so the number would be higher, and I think that number is much higher than $10,000 per pilot. Think the company will rush to settle our contract next time, especially if the market is in our favor? It would be financially irresponsible for them to do that.

CA1900

It definitely is, and I've seen it myself. But something feels different about it this cycle -- it's making me dig my heels in even harder. I'm insulted by the company's lack of action, and my price is getting more expensive the longer they drag this out. The profit sharing going into C-suite bonuses (as what, a "reward" for the meltdown?) is just the icing on the cake.

Lewbronski

I'm pretty confident that FH will advise our management to use a similar strategy against our pilot group after our SAV as was demonstrated to be successful against both the Alaska and Delta pilot groups: within a few months of the SAV, dropping a TA with some very attractive curb appeal to 50%+ of the plot group, but also very far from what could be achieved. One of the most effective arguments that was heard, at least here on APC, for ratifying those TA's at Alaska and Delta was the time value of money, "it'll take too long to put together a new TA to justify not ratifying the bird in hand" argument.

Right now, besides the subjective, "Nuh uhh," there really isn't much of an objective counter-argument to that line of reasoning. IMO, an effective way to argue against approving this sort of TA is to be able to offer the historical evidence of second or third TA's that were significantly better than the ones they replaced as evidence in support of the value of waiting the time that would be required to get to a second TA.

At SWA, last cycle, TA-2, for example, was much better than TA-1. But that's just one example. Naysayers could simply brush that off as one anecdotal example. What would be very useful, IMO, is to have a catalog of TA-2's (or 3's) that were better than the TA's that were voted down, along with some of the key details on those TA's and how long it took to achieve them. Perhaps SWAPA could host something like that on its website. Maybe we could begin crowd-sourcing that info here on APC and offer it to SWAPA as it begins to build.

If we don't have some kind of objective library of information like that to offer those who just want some money now - if we can't provide them the hope as to how much more money and quality of life and benefits they could potentially net by waiting - we're very likely to suffer the same fate as Alaska and Delta.