Comair sold to Mesa?????

[AAflyer]

An AA MD-80 captain makes $134,904 a year on reserve, at a gurantee of 73 hours. You looked at the line gurantee of 64, however there are no lines that are 64 hours. In fact at my base the average line value 77:32.

While you can use those numbers in theory, you are doing a diservice to readers in spreading that assumption.

Regards,

AA

 

[JoeMerchant]

lets take another look Joe...www.airlinepilotcentral.com/content/view/6/16/

thats ones for AMR...Take a look at second year fo on the 80 ...71/hr...ASA 34....HMMM...your compairing full grown cow to a baby elephant.

Yes when you get to the top of the pay scale...theres only a $40/hr difference between there lowest paid senior capitain and our highest...

so it is fair to say that on PLUTO...we make the same money...get real dude!!

FL990,
I'm glad you brought this up. This will further help to explain WHY we are in this mess. Believe it or not, we are on the same team. Your point here shows how things like the CMR concessions happen.

Yes I compared only SENIOR captains. My point there is that for SENIOR captains, the pay, benefits and work rules are close enough that it doesn't pay to leave anymore to go to the "majors". So many of them will want to grow their own company regardless of how it affects another pilot group. Enlightened self-interest will trump collective good everytime it is put to a vote.

That takes care of why the majority of the senior pilots vote to accept these agreements. Now lets move on to the junior pilots, or the FO's at the regionals. Whether or not the regional FO's want to stay at the regionals, or move on to the majors, they NEED growth at their company. They NEED this because they need to make captain to make decent money and they need PIC time if they want to move on.

Put the senior "lifers" who are comfortable together with the FOs who need to upgrade, and you get at least 51% of the YES votes regardless of how it affects ANY other pilot group. The other pilot groups can stomp their feet all day long and complain about "lowering the bar" until they're blue in the face. Will it change anything? The simple answer is NO.

Your right, the FOs do not get paid anything close to what the majors get, thus leading you right back to WHY the CMR pilots voted the way they did. Had the EXACT same situation happened here at ASA, I bet you the ASA vote would have been the same. If the roles had been reversed, it would probably have been CMR pilots complaining that we stabbed them in the back.

Joe

 

[FL990]

Joe,


I appologize for calling you Joey...that was disrespectful.

I can see your intentions and now realize that you are not an idiot. I don't necessarily disagree with you on some of what you say with regard to very senior captains leaving. this is true, there is little incentive for them to leave...

However, how many people do we have here that are 15+ years...i don't have the list in front of me but I know it is probably not more than a few hundred. Most of the Capts here are making below $80hr. They could leave and be back up to that wage level in a year or two at most majors. And work rules...they are much much better at the major level than ours.

If we continue the trend of trading for growth, we do ALL pilots and injustice. This is why i dislike what CMR did. I'm not bitter, and also, in the long run, I think we will be better off with Skywest.

Just something to think about.

I'm out.

 

[JoeMerchant]

An AA MD-80 captain makes $134,904 a year on reserve, at a gurantee of 73 hours. You looked at the line gurantee of 64, however there are no lines that are 64 hours. In fact at my base the average line value 77:32.

While you can use those numbers in theory, you are doing a diservice to readers in spreading that assumption.

Regards,

AA

Fine, here is the comparison at 77.5 hours

AMR MD80: $143,220
United 737/A320: $119,970
Horizon CRJ700: $106,950
CMR CRJ700: $105,090

Between $14,000 and $38,000 more for a senior mainline narrowbody captain than for a senior regional captain. It would take over 15 years for that senior regional captain to get to that point if he left for the majors today assuming they are even hiring.

The point still stands folks - it doesn't pay for the senior regional captain to leave anymore because the compensation gap has closed. That is why they want to grow their company. The regional FO wants to grow his company because he either wants to become one of the senior captains, or he wants the PIC time so he can move on to the majors. Thus they BOTH vote for any deal to get growth, the flying moves from the mainline to the regional, and we sit around and blame each other. It is the ultimate catch-22 and we will need to change the way we do things as a pilot union or we just need to accept this as the new reality and move on.

Which one will it be?