Time2Spare said:
So I return to my previous point that a junior captain, ANY junior captain is worth more to a company than a senior captain on the basis not only of hourly pay, but utilization. I'm a relatively senior FO currently and they get a lot less out of me now than when I was junior and was scheduling's b*tch. With my 15 days off and 75 hr lines, I'm making as much as I did as a new hire on reserve cause they used me a lot more.....same holds true with junior Captain's I'm sure.
I look forward to your reply. (You're really giving me food for thought!)
Against my better judgment, I'm posting on this thread. It's just that I am compelled to point out fallacious reasoning, wherever I see it. I can't help myself, it's a disease.
It doesn't matter how long you've held a senority number, junior is junior and you're going to be "scheduling's b1tch" Let's say a company has 100 captain slots. If you're #100, you're the junior captain. You get the reserve lines, the calls in the middle of the night on your day off, the trips no-one else wants. It doesn't matter if you've been #100 for a month or you've been #100 for 7 years, you're still the most junior captain, and you still get the least desirable assignments. If you've already topped out on the pay scale, then your compensation doesn't change either. Your argument that the company gets less utilization out of you doesn't hold water. They get the same level of utilization out of the junior captain, regardless of how long you've been the most junior captain. If you've been stuck at #100 for 7 years, you're still utilized and abused at the same level. The same applies at the top, if you're senority #1, you get the best the company has to offer. It doesn't matter if you've been #1 for 1 month or 7 years. If you've already topped out on the pay scale, your pay doesn't change and your bidding prospects don't change ... unless the work rules at the company change. (that's a seperate issue and now were comparing apples to oranges)
Your position seems to be that the company needs to cycle pilots through the senority list so that you can always have junior pilots who are "highly utilized" My point is that no matter how slowly or quickly the pilots move through the senority list, somone will always be junior, and that somone will always be "highly utilized" regardless of how long he's been there.
Time2Spare said:
However, I don't believe there is a direct "domino effect" such as your post suggests. All airlines have continuous training cycles which are based on growth, retirements, deaths, medicals, etc. These costs are budgeted every year and are generally a fixed cost.
It doesn't matter if you believe in it or not. The domino effect is there. If a captain leaves, you do in fact have to train at the very least, one person for each seat. In the very simplest example of a company with one a/c type with a 2 pilot crew, a captain leaving means that you have to upgrade one F/O to captain, and train one new hire F/O. At companies with multiple types and multiple bases, the chances get better that you will have additional upgrade and transition training costs. You can't get around it, unless you've figured out how to fly airplanes with empty seats in the cockpit. Those upgrade and transition training costs are over and above the annual recurrent training costs. Even if a captain upgrade just magically happened on the date an F/O would have been in annual recurrent training, the upgrade training, pc and IOE is more expensive than the f/o recurrent training and PC. Just as obviously, training a new hire is more expensive than not training a new hire. It may be that the company anticipates those costs, and budgets for them, but that doesn't make them any less real as costs. It's a bit like saying that my company loses 3 airframes a year to crashes, but we budget for it, so it doesn't actually cost us anything. A cost is still a cost, whether it's budgeted or not.
None of this means that I either agree or disagree with your position on the age 60 rule. On the contrary, questions of who will benefit financially and who will lose finacially should never come into discussions about the age 60 rule. The only factor that should ever be considered is safety. Is there a real, verifiable, safety problem with pilots over 60? If yes, keep it, if no ditch it. It's that simple. FAA has no business making or changing regulations based on whose wallet it fattens. Anyone who advocates retaining or discarding the rule based on how it will affect thier wallets is motivated purely by greed, not logic and fairness. The most obscene displays of naked greed are those who make no secret of fact that they support forcing pilots into retirement only because it enhances thier chances of a quicker upgrade and a bigger paycheck. It's a sad commentary on human nature. Those who favor age discrimination merely because it will benefit them personally are in no way different than those minorities who clamor for preferential hiring, or college admissions, or whatever form of discrimination, merely because it benefits them personally. It's all greed, in it's purest form, and it's all reprehensible.
Fact, the 12 year F/O upgraded to Captain same aircraft gets the same pay per hour as the 59 year old Captain that has 35 years service. That happens to be the ALPA standard contract. No extra high pay for the old guys. Sorry
