bottoms up

Don't worry we are!

Regularguy

"How do the powers that be decide on what the pay rate for a certain airplane should be?"

The answer goes back to the "good old days" when heavy jets were first introduced into the airline's fleets.

The advent of the jet brought with it an increase in hourly productivity for pilots. For management they could haul more people and freight further and faster than ever before which meant for the pilot, doing more "work" in the same amount of time. Thus the gross weight and airspeed formula was developed. Also there was a premium pay hold over from night and over-water flying which was considered more hazardous.

Essentially the reason heavies and wide bodies pay more was because they weigh more. Additionally, a single wide body jet has the potential to gain more revenues than two of the earlier narrow body airplanes.

The answer then is simply this, productivity and revenue generation potential. Of course all of this has been forgotten.

Merry Christmas!

oldmako

By most. Sad to see how stupid we've been, and continue to be.

XHooker

Do you know the formula?

Firsttimeflyer

I believe it should be max cruise airspeed in mph + max gross weight divided by 1000 = pay rate in dollars per hour.

Example for 747:

575+ (910,000÷1000) = $1485.00

Or course that is the captains pay rate and the FO is paid at a percentage based on the max mach # of the captain rate, so in this case I believe it is .84 giving a hourly dollar figure of $1247.40

Regularguy

Out right I do not. One of the past UAL contracts did have a version of the formula in place in case the management purchase new jet not covered by those in the contract.

ALPA does have records of the old contracts should you be interested in finding out how the numbers were figured. Or we can just make up some arbitrary pay like the current banding does. I personally have been in favor of straight pay by seat and seniority, but many strongly believe it ignores the productivity factors.

Sunvox

W T F mate? First, you only have 12 posts so how can you say "How many times . . . " on any topic? Second, DAL pays 777 $263 and UAL pays $255 so how is that equal, but yes we banded the 787 and 764 up, but we have 14 764 and 11 787 so we banded down a "bleep" load more guys than we banded up. Also, UAL rates do not lag DAL rates by one year consistently. Why not lay out a grid showing year by year? Oh, you didn't want to be bothered by the actual facts . . .oh right .. . it's the internet.

pilot64golfer

That was for the SLI argument to get all our mid-body 757s to count the same as a guppy and their 767s and 787s not even on the property to count the same as our 747s.

Don't sweat it. None of those people are negotiating the next contract so maybe we can dig ourselves out of the hole they put us all in.

Scrappy

I love your myopathy. 50 787s dude, with 25 in the near future. I'd say the NC was smart in that regard...trying to maximize pay for a large number of WB pilots in the not to distant future. The old jumbos are a dot in a few years buddy. Making those dinosaurs pay the most would have substantially decreased the earning potential of the pilot group as those archaic airframes die off.

All in unity right? Keep tooting that jumbo horn.

pilot64golfer

Not with 35 A-350s being delivered.