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bobbysamd

Well-known member
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Nov 26, 2001
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From the Denver Rocky Mountain News. Just one comment, though. Did the guy consider WIA to keep flying? Just the same, hope that his lot and those of others we know improve soon.

From air to ground

United pilot loses dream job, struggles as builder

By Heather Draper, Rocky Mountain News
July 19, 2003

About 16,500 people have lost their jobs, quit or retired since United Airlines filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 9. Locally, employee ranks have dropped from 9,500 to 7,000 since Sept. 11, 2001. From a young pilot on furlough to an aircraft cleaner who stockpiles food, workers share how United's descent has changed them and their families in a five-part series beginning today.

As a boy, Eric Lybarger dreamed of wearing a United Airlines pilot's uniform when he grew up.

When he and his family made a rare trip to Stapleton Airport, he would watch in awe when United flight crews walked by.

"I just knew what I wanted, and I wanted to fly planes," Lybarger said. "Growing up here, United, of course, was the big hometown airline."

After years of training, personal sacrifice and many hours flying for small regional carriers, Lybarger landed his dream job as a United Airlines Boeing 737 first officer in January 2000.

Today, he is struggling to launch a home-improvement business out of his modest Grant Ranch home. His dream of flying the friendly skies has faded into a reality of pinching pennies and searching for customers.

"I'm in a terrible situation where I'm trying to support a family and I'm starting a business in a bad economy," he said.

Lybarger, 33, along with many of his fellow junior United pilots, was furloughed after United's parent company, UAL Corp., filed for bankruptcy in December. Stories similar to his are repeated across Denver and the nation, with 1,555 United pilots furloughed since Sept. 11, 2001. Those pilots fortunate enough still to have jobs have taken 30 percent to 60 percent pay cuts and are working increased hours with fewer perks.

Chicago-based United filed for the largest bankruptcy in aviation history Dec. 9, 2002. Since then, the carrier has furloughed some 8,140 employees and won $2.56 billion in annual wage and benefit concessions from its six employee groups.

The union for United pilots said this week that UAL plans to furlough 600 to 800 more pilots by next July. Lybarger thinks he might get his job back at United in six or seven years, if he's lucky.

"It's really difficult," Lybarger said. "I have a hard time thinking of a way to analyze it. Imagine the PGA telling Tiger Woods, 'Even though you're very good at your game and you can do a lot for the golfing industry, we don't need you anymore. We'll give you a call when we need you.' "

Learning the ropes

Lybarger's road to United Airlines was long and circuitous. The Heritage High School graduate got a degree in communications at the University of Colorado. He said it wasn't really a strategic decision but was done mainly because "airlines are looking for bachelor's degrees."

He was flying while he was in school, logging about 1,500 hours before he got his first airline job, several years after he graduated from CU.

Lybarger wanted to earn his wings in the military, which would speed up the process to get on at United, but the military wasn't recruiting pilots when he wanted to join.

He went on to earn his master's degree in aeronautical science studies from the prestigious - and expensive - Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 1996. Lybarger landed his first airline job at Cheyenne-based Great Lakes Aviation shortly after that.

"I was trying to get into the military for the longest time, and a master's degree in aeroscience was highly desirable in the military," Lybarger says. "But then, of course, the military was never 'hiring' when I was applying."

Lybarger said his first years as a pilot were so unglamorous that he lived with his parents for several years after his first marriage ended. He made just enough at Appleton-based Air Wisconsin - his third airline job - to pay his student loans.

He tells of a pilot friend working at Skywest who makes $19 an hour.

"That's per flight hour, though, so basically the plane has to be moving for him to make any money," Lybarger said. "He's only paid for maybe 80 to 90 hours a month. If you do the math, he could be a shift leader at Burger King and be making a lot more money."

The sacrifices people make at regional carriers, especially as first officer, are phenomenal, he said. "You just have to get that experience to get on at United, unless you go through the military."

Planes, trucks, car (sales)

After learning in December that he would lose his United job at the beginning of March, Lybarger researched becoming an independent truck driver.

It wasn't so much going from the cockpit to truck stops that bothered him, but the money. "The profit margins are terrible," he says of his decision not to take to the open road.

He tried selling cars for a month. "I'm a really low-pressure person. My boss told me one day that I needed to be pushier," he says in explaining why he's not selling cars any more.

Painfully aware that his job prospects in the airline industry would be bleak for some time, Lybarger finally opted to go back to the skills he learned as a young boy, helping his father, Glenn Lybarger - a master carpenter and Littleton shop teacher - do home-improvement work.

Thus came Mighty Guppy Home Improvements Inc., named after United pilots' nickname for the Boeing 737 jet, which is smaller and squatter than its larger cousins, the 747 and 777.

His brother Aaron works with him, in addition to a job as a firefighter. Lybarger admits that while he is proud to be carrying on his father's tradition, he'd rather be flying.

"There is so much stimulation going on, mentally, emotionally and physically," he said. "It involves all of your senses, and at times, it's just very beautiful and serene.

"Ever seen the Earth's shadow in space? I have," he added. "And stars are much prettier at 37,000 feet."

He enjoyed his job so much that it never felt like work. Being on the ground feels like work, Lybarger says.

"If what you're doing is what you've always wanted to do, it's really hard to find something else that gets you just as excited," he says, trying to downplay how hard losing his job has been on him.

"I don't really show too many people how much it's bothering me. But I feel a lot of disappointment and loss. I am grieving."

Flipping burgers

Lybarger and his wife, Robin, 32, have a 1-year-old son named Kavi (loosely after former Bronco Kavika Pittman and the Hindi word for "poet").

Robin took some time off to be a full-time mom, but after her husband's furlough, she went back to work part time in June doing media relations and marketing work for Aiello Public Relations and Marketing.

"After a couple of months of no income, it was more imperative that I get a job to have a more steady stream of income coming in," Robin said. "I have more marketable skills than he does in the current marketplace."

And the couple just learned that Robin is pregnant with their second child.

"It was a surprise, but we had always planned on having two children," she said. "Just maybe not this soon."

Eric said wanting to support his family makes his furlough from United that much harder to take. The nicest, rather unexpected pleasure about working for United, he said, was that he could spend more time with his family. His pay was enough that he didn't have to log all the overtime hours he did at the regional carriers.

As a reserve pilot at United, he typically flew four 1 ½-hour flights in a day, which equated to 10- to 12-hour days with the "wait" time between flights added in.

In a good month, he might have 15 days off.

When his wife teased him about having so much time off, he would counter that people who work 40 hours a week typically are away from home about 160 hours a month.

"On average, I was away from home about 250 hours a month," he said. "I haven't celebrated Christmas since 1998."

Still, he was home more with his United job than with any of his previous airline jobs.

"It gave us a lot of freedom," he said, as he was nuzzled by his enthusiastic German short-haired pointer, Berkley. "Now that everything has changed, it's really unstable."

So far, any enthusiasm he has toward his new construction endeavor has outweighed his actual business. He said the home-improvement market, like most aspects of the economy, is tough right now.

"People have you come and do a bid, and you never hear from them again," he said. "I'm at the point where Robin and I are having some pretty serious talks about folding the business and seeing if I can find a job flipping hamburgers or something. It's pretty depressing."

Catch me if you can

Lingering stereotypes of affluent, globe-trotting pilots often make the public unsympathetic to the plight of Lybarger and other pilots, said an older Chicago- based United pilot, who asked that his name not be used.

"The job isn't glamorous today," the pilot said. "Look at Catch Me If You Can, which is so tongue-in-cheek, it just makes it that much more obvious that it's not that way anymore."

(continued)
 
(continued)


Actor Leonardo DiCaprio - in a scene from that recent movie about 1960s con man Frank Abagnale Jr. - is dressed in a Pan Am pilot's uniform and is mobbed by young children who ask if he's a pilot, then ask for his autograph.

In another scene, DiCaprio strides confidently into Miami International Airport with a flight attendant on each arm and several others in tow, looking more like a rock star than a commercial pilot.

Lybarger thinks stereotypes about overpaid airline pilots sipping mai tais while laying over in Australia are so off- base they're humorous.

"At United, I laid over in places like Cedar Rapids (Iowa) and Grand Rapids (Michigan)," he says, laughing. "I got all the 'Rapids' places."

Lybarger says he never broke the $100,000-a-year mark at United - his best year there he made $80,000 - and typically made "much, much less" than that during most of his pilot career.

"It just kind of cracks me up," he said, noting that he drives a "white Toyota truck, and it doesn't have leather seats."

Not a job - a career

For Lybarger and other furloughed United pilots, it isn't as easy as going to a competitor and getting a similar job.

The U.S. airline industry remains in financial turmoil, thanks to a sputtering global economy and the residual effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

And when United pilots leave for another job, they lose the seniority they've built up, starting for the competitor at the lowest rung of the career ladder for much lower pay and fewer perks.

Not surprisingly, pilots at United usually stay with United for their entire careers.

"It's really funny because I had reached, as far as I was concerned, the top of my career pyramid, where I'd dreamt of being my whole life," Lybarger said.

With his wings at United clipped, he will likely stay on the ground for a while doing home improvements.

Or maybe he'll look into flipping burgers after all.

"I don't feel like I have to prove anything anymore in my life, because when I got hired at United, for me that was as high as I imagined I could go."

The faces behind the numbers

• About 16,500 United Airlines employees have quit, retired or been laid off since the carrier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December.

• That is on top of 19,000 jobs lost from the 102,000 positions that existed on Sept. 11, 2001.

• Locally, employee ranks have dropped from 9,500, to 7,000, since the terrorist attacks.
 
4 Yr degree not needed

Here is a perfect example of going to college for the wrong reason, he has no marketable skill as a fall back on. Now if he had a degree in Nursing, Teaching, CPA, etc. he would be in a much better poisition weather the storm.
 
At least this article wasn't like the last one I read about a furloughed 31 yr-old UAL pilot. It was hard to feel sympathetic in the newspaper article i had read since he was complaining about having to get rid of the nanny and cancelling a 2 week trip to Hawaii...:rolleyes:
 
Degrees

pilotyip said:
Here is a perfect example of going to college for the wrong reason, he has no marketable skill as a fall back on. Now if he had a degree in Nursing, Teaching, CPA, etc. he would be in a much better poisition weather the storm.
I agree with you, Yip, about nursing. I believe the nurse shortage has been demonstrated. In addition, nurses can work out of agencies and temp services.

A degree in communications actually provides a few "Plan B" skills. You learn to write advertising copy and other things. The skills in a communications course are not as tangible as nursing, but are still marketable.

A teaching degree is fine, but how many teaching jobs are open? You can substitute-teach, but, in many school districts, you can be a sub without an ed degree.

I know Accounting degrees because I have one. I don't know of too many places that will hire a CPA without some sort of commitment. I may be wrong about that. You also have to attend continuing ed to keep up.

I believe my friend and our moderator Falcon. Capt. noted that a degree is fine, but to make it valuable you have to have experience in the field. That is true in accounting. I recall that while you could take the C.P.A. exam out of college you could not get your certificate until you have a couple of years of experience.
 
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This series has been pretty good. Today's featured a GSE Mechanic whose' two cars have a combined 545,000 miles on them. The terrible part is that his son pursued a flying career, got hired with Key Lime (in the Metro, I assume) but crashed and died with his F/O in the mountians in Sept of 2001.
 
Cardinal said:
...hired with Key Lime (in the Metro, I assume) but crashed and died with his F/O in the mountians in Sept of 2001.

Actually, it was a Navajo. I was flying to ABQ when it happened. I think he was doing stupid stuff too like scud running. The NTSB report said there was no evidence of mechanical abnormality prior to impact. Sounds like CFIT to me.

Skyking
 
I can just imagine flying with this guy. Hearing his doom and gloom, life is no fair, I never get any breaks. Talk about a long month.
 
Well it was a doom and gloom series of articles. You should have read some of the others, they'll give you the urge to go out back and blow your head off. His (no doubt heavily edited) quotations paint a fairly accurate picture of the business from the inside. The dude's furloughed, do we expect him to break out in song?
 

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