This Guy Gets It
Re: A Sacred Cow in the Cockpit '=
By Steven Pearlstein -- Washington Post
Friday, March 21, 2008; Page D01
Dear Mr. Pearlstein,
In your March 21 article, "A Sacred Cow in the Cockpit", you highlighted the airlines' pilot seniority system, along with unions and "the selfishness and shortsightedness of airline pilots" as being the source of the airlines' ills.
I too find fault in the seniority system for this reason: the seniority system is a trap, impeding a pilot's ability to market his skills to the highest bidding airline.
In 1980, after earning my way through college as a commercial diver, competing three years as a varsity college athlete, and graduation with honors in aeronautics, my hard work, commitment, and sacrifice were rewarded with acceptance into a Navy pilot officer training program.
If I worked hard and successfully completed Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, I would earn the opportunity to work hard, sacrifice, and commit to Navy flight training. Of my initial class of thirty-three officer candidates, only thirteen of us completed this initial program. The other two thirds, all selected college graduates, washed out before the hard work of flight training had even begun.
The next year and a half were similar, in that my hard work, sacrifice, and commitment led ultimately to graduating Navy jet pilot training at the top of my class. Additionally, there was now risk. The risk of failure - many other very capable pilot trainees washed out, and the physical risk that could cost a young pilot his life.
Earning my wings at the top of my class gained me the privilege of another full year of hard work, sacrifice, commitment, and risk. This time, as a Fleet Replacement Pilot, learning to fly and fight the F-14A "Tomcat".
As before, the weeding out process continued, with the first two of several squadron mates lost in a fatal accident, and the ongoing performance standards to meet, with the final cut being based on successful night-time aircraft carrier landing qualification.
The next five years of active duty service to my country were characterized again by, you guessed it, hard work, sacrifice, and commitment, and a substantial amount of risk which claimed the lives of several more squadron mates. Are you beginning to see a theme yet?
In 1987, after serving seven years as a Navy carrier based fighter pilot, I competed against many other highly qualified applicants to attain a position on the bottom of Delta's pilot seniority list. At that time, Delta Air Lines was sought after by many aspiring professional pilots, due to its long tradition of strong management, financial stability, harmonious labor relations, and top of the industry compensation.
The subsequent twenty years of my career as a Delta pilot are where the aforementioned strategies of hard work, sacrifice, commitment, and risk were no longer rewarded. We in the profession became the target of airline managers constantly seeking to diminish our hard earned standard of living, while greatly boosting their own wealth.
A compliant business press aided these executives in their effort to deflect attention from their own inability to successfully manage our airline, by dutifully scapegoated pilots.
This is where you come in. Those of us in the piloting profession long enough to have been through several business cycles have seen the same business press misrepresentations recycled several times now.
These biased journalistic efforts typically contain phrases such as yours: "the selfishness and shortsightedness of airline pilots", even though the seniority system ensures pilots interests are in the long term health of his or her company. These same pilots have seen a parade of turnstile executives cycle through, taking their plunder with them in the form of early vestment in special executive retirement plans, severance packages, and other forms of featherbedding.
Another business press straw man is the spoiled pilot, who works only a few days per month. The dishonest omission, as you probably know, is the length of a pilot's work day, and his total hours of paid time which is always less than actual in uniform on-duty time.
An airline pilot's on-duty time frequently exceeds twelve hours, and more recently, goes well over sixteen hours, due to the advent longer range international flying. A pilot is not paid for preflight preparation time, or time spent in between flights while connecting to the next leg of flying during his duty day. This doesn't even take into account the amount of time a pilot spends away from home, as his working days off-duty time is spent living in a hotel room.
In your article, you assert that one would think that "given the precarious financial nature of the industry, pilots would be willing to show some flexibility to assure the long-term success of their companies." You failed to point out that Delta pilots lost their defined benefit pension plan, and nearly half of their pay, during Delta's recent trip through bankruptcy.
Would you or your readers care to show such flexibility?
I believe that your misrepresentations cause harm to the airline industry by deflecting attention from other, very serious structural and management issues, which aids in their perpetuation.
These issues include skyrocketing jet fuel prices, skyrocketing medical insurance benefit costs, a lack of pricing power in order to cover these skyrocketing costs , and a disconnect between executive compensation and a company's long term financial performance.
In fact, it is ironic that you mention "a disconnect between performance and reward" in reference to the pilot seniority system, without noting what is in the recent memory of nearly every Delta pilot. That is the gang of short-term executives, led by Leo Mullin, who briefly passed through Delta, and then left for greener pastures with their lavish unearned retirements safely in hand, as Delta approached the bankruptcy that cost these pilots their pensions and standard of living.
The bias you employ in playing to your target audience is a disservice to professional pilots, who now find that, contrary to the long held promise of America, their hard work, sacrifice, commitment, and risk are no longer rewarded. They deserve better. And you, and the traveling public, should hope that enough reward remains in the airline pilot profession to draw the quality of people needed to ensure that your every flight continues to operate at the high level of safety which you currently take for granted.
For my part, I have conceded that, in a time in which leaders at the very top of our political and corporate culture are not held accountable for their failures, near term change is not likely.
At the age of fifty, without enough remaining working years as an airline pilot to rebuild a retirement, I quit Delta, in order start over by running my own business. Finally, after twenty years, my hard work, sacrifice, commitment, and risk are again being rewarded.
