To my fellow ACA pilots (and to the rest as well):
1.) Getting into a ####ing contest with the fellow pilots is just beneath us at this time (divide and conquer).
2.) I have two Mesa buddies and both truthfully voted "no". They don't understand the "yes" votes either, but an awful lot of people took the bait and got scared.
3.) If a vote comes to ACA, I know I will vote NO concessions. I don't care - we are paid diddly squat to do our job. Our wages are within 10% of everybody else (yes we're 4% lower than CMR and ASA and we're 10-11% higher than Mesa and CHQ). 10% of nothing is nothing and 10% of almost nothing is still nothing.
4.) I don't know what your paycheck says, but last year I got paid $24.70/flt hr to fly right seat DO and $47.60 to fly left seat DO. My W-4 says $28K and some change in SALARY. Next year, converting to the CRJ, I will jump (potentially) to $58K as my highest possible earnings. So here I am a 3-year veteran of the airline with a 4-yr degree and 3,000 hrs of personally bought training to make the grade and I'm still averaging a salary roughly equivalent to an apprentice plumber or carpenter.
5.) Counting your per diem as salary is just sick. That is money you get to live on the road. If YOU think of it as salary, then the COMPANY will think of it as salary. It's not! It is a pitiful amount of money that does not adequately reimburse me for my travel expenses on the road. At the end of the year, I did not have my 28K salary and 5K of perdiem to spend. The 5K vanished on the road and Uncle Sam and the state of Maryland took 50% of the rest leaving me with $14,000 to pay all my bills at home.
5.) Even if I vote NO on concessions, I gather enough of you will vote YES to allow the thing to pass and I will have to eat my tongue and continue working or give up a very valuable seniority number.
6.) I will get poorer and the rich including Tom, Kerry and Jonathon will get richer. The industry will break our backs to provide $100 airfares to anywhere in the country while still making fat profits and boosting the stock price. This is capitalism.
7.) The only way #6 will not happen is if we:
a.) strike (or do something to slow the juggernaut)
b.) have a horrific week where undertrained, overworked and underpaid pilots have lots of accidents.
c.) re-regulate.
a.) requires a strong and united union and maybe even a national level demonstration of how bad the plight of a regional pilot is.
b.) is a nightmare in our minds, but a string of accidents (which I think is a possibility) from stressed and fatigued pilots would create a public outcry for change (regardless of cost - kind of like the current security spending).
c.) also unthinkable to a conservative capitalist like myself, but if the airline's management can't successfully run a business, then maybe we should have a regulated industry so people will understand that it costs $500 per ticket to take them coast-to-coast and $1000 to take them to Europe and there's no such thing as a "free ride".
