Is this profession in peril?

[JetFumes]

For the foreseeable future, as long as there are airplanes, there will be a need for pilots. Someday UAV's may change that...

I'm not sure profession is the right word to use. It seems more a vocation than a profession.

I still like to call it a profession. Most of us have college degrees and have had to study our butts off to get here. We forget that we could easily figure out what a manager does, we would just rather fly. I'm not sure how a business degree became worth so much more that an aviation degree, but that seems to be the case, despite the fact that we have peoples lives in our hands each day.

The bottom line is that people have been conditioned to think that a 39 dollar fare is the norm. Fares must come up, its that simple. Until the airline collectively figure this out, or Southwests hedges run out, its going to be tough on everyone.

 

[PCL_128]

Also, ALPA has not and can not represent "regional" airline pilots, due to obvious conflicts of interest.

There is no conflict of interest. The interests of regional and mainline pilots coincide.

Therefore, regional airline pilots perhaps should consider a national organization the way things stand now.

Regional pilots can't provide enough revenue to support their own union structure. As it stands right now, the larger carriers within ALPA have to help support them. To be self-sufficient, a regional union would require dues somewhere along the lines of 4-5%, plus some extremely large initial assessments that no regional pilots could possibly afford. Basically, a "RALPA" organization is unworkable.

 

[PCL_128]

alpa does not do Pinnacle pilots justice when it pushes for tighter scope restrictions for Northwest.

It most certainly does. The overwhelming majority of Pinnacle pilots desire to work for a major airline. They don't want to work at Pinnacle. They have to work at Pinnacle just to be able to move on to a career carrier at some point. With stronger scope at NWA, these pilots move on quicker to that job that they really want.

Conversely, alpa does not do Northwest pilots justice when it pushes for looser scope restrictions at Pinnacle.

ALPA doesn't push for looser scope restrictions at Pinnacle. PCL ALPA has no negotiations whatsoever with NWA over scope or anything else. The PCL MEC negotiates only with Pinnacle management.

 

[PCL_128]

You don't want to talk about leadership b/c that requires you to look in the mirror.

No it doesn't. I'm not a member of the leadership anymore. Haven't been in some time. I'm looking at this as an outsider just as you are.

I just go a step further and ask why it's there.

It's there because it's always been there. Pilots have been apathetic from the early days of ALPA all the way throughout its history. You like to imagine that this is a relatively new phenomenon, but it's not. It's always been this way. Pilots are just lazy and apathetic. They want to fly their trips and go home without worrying about any of this stuff. They want other people to worry about it, but then they want to b!tch about it all the time when things don't go their way.

How about instead of blaming and railing on those of us you ASSUME have done nothing

Ok, you say I'm just "assuming" that you've done nothing. So prove me wrong. What have you done? What office have you run for? What committee positions do you hold? Or have you just sat in the crew lounge and online and complained about the people that have done something?

DO you think you could just give reasoned arguments about what needs to be done w/o the apathy-inspiring critiques?

Asking someone to give reasoned arguments about the problems with ALPA without talking about the membership's own apathy is akin to asking a surgeon to help someone with a broken arm without setting the bone. The membership's apathy is 90% of the problem, so you can't discuss the fixing of ALPA without discussing the problems with apathy. You may not like to hear about it, but as Harry Truman once said, "I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell."

I'm being a LEADER right now

Again, how are you being a leader? Posting on an internet message board or complaining in the crew lounge is not "being a leader." Running for office and working to fix the problems is being a leader. Have you done that?

 

[YourPilotFriend]

This profession died when the passengers who could actually pay our salaries bought private jets. There are now 11,000 business jets flying around. We fly for walmart customers at walmart wages, that's the profession as it stands today. Unless you have a plan to get those high paying customers back there is not much hope.

 

[Andy]

And ALPA is nothing resembling a kleptocracy, if you even know what that means.

[sarcasm] No, I have no idea what a kleptocracy is; I thought that it sounded like a nice made up word. Is there such thing? [/sarcasm]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptocracy

[sarcasm]And I'm sure that the comments from fellow pilots that I've heard over the years about alpa favoring senior pilots along with the standard 'when you're a senior pilot, you can write the rules' and the 'pull up the ladder I've got mine' statements are not based in fact.[/sarcasm]

 

[Redmeat]

hey pocono...pull your big bad RJ over to my airplane ...i need a chock!

Why don't you give the regional folks your name so they know not to give you a free ride on their "chock" when you want to get home/work.

Then again judging from your post you most likely don't need a ride since you were probably born and raised in MeUmphus and never left.

 

[Andy]

Asking someone to give reasoned arguments about the problems with ALPA without talking about the membership's own apathy is akin to asking a surgeon to help someone with a broken arm without setting the bone. The membership's apathy is 90% of the problem, so you can't discuss the fixing of ALPA without discussing the problems with apathy. You may not like to hear about it, but as Harry Truman once said, "I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell."

There wasn't much apathy with the push poll. The majority of pilots voted on it. It had a higher voter turnout than any US presidential election. And I'd venture to guess that there have been few other votes in history where the turnout has been so high.

I especially loved the way that rez twisted the results. The majority of alpa voted. The majority favored the rule remaining the same. BUT if you took the dissenting votes and combined it with the abstentions, you could conceivably craft a majority. That's the type of thinking that seems to permeate from national. Kleptocracy in it's finest form.
You fail to acknowledge the problems with alpa, choosing instead to blame everything on member apathy and prater. Meanwhile, you, specifically YOU PCL, were a rep at the time. What did you do to stop this abuse of the system? Were all of the elected reps waiting for rest of us to go to Herndon with torches and pitchforks?

 

[PCL_128]

The majority of pilots voted on it.

No they didn't. Less than 50% of the pilots participated in the poll. I can't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it was a minority of the membership.

Meanwhile, you, specifically YOU PCL, were a rep at the time. What did you do to stop this abuse of the system?

I brought a resolution against changing ALPA's policy. It was loosely based on the NWA resolution that had the same intent. The NWA MEC passed their resolution, and their Chairman and EVP did as directed, but I couldn't get a majority of my MEC to go along with it, and our Chairman and EVP voted in favor of changing the policy. I pushed it as hard as I could, but a few regional lifers on the MEC (including the corrupt former MEC Chairman) were able to defeat it. I also personally talked with Prater as early as last February and told him that I thought he was making a big mistake in pushing this issue. Of course, he brushed me off and continued to enjoy the praise of the AAA reps that thought changing the rule was the best idea since the pill. I also talked with numerous EVPs both before and after the vote to let them know what I thought of the change. In the end, one rep from a mid-sized regional doesn't have much pull, Andy. Few people were really pushing against the change. Only the NWA MEC was really unified against this change. None of the other MECs really rallied against Prater, and that can be blamed on the ambivalence of their members. If a huge group of UAL, DAL, CAL, etc.... members had exerted just 10% of the effort that the APAAD scumbags did, then they could have pushed their MECs into taking action. Without that kind of participation, then you should expect these sorts of results.

 

[Andy]

No they didn't. Less than 50% of the pilots participated in the poll. I can't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it was a minority of the membership.

Maybe the minority of pilots voted at PCL. The numbers are near impossible to find; I saw them in one place. And that place was NOT alpa.org. So you can spin it any way you want, the results have only seen the light of day because a few reps have leaked them.

I can't find the results anywhere. I can, however, find this: http://news.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20071213/13dec20071344.html

Stop the spin. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Inhouse is the only way to get representation that's accountable to the membership.

 

[PCL_128]

Maybe the minority of pilots voted at PCL.

No, a minority ALPA-wide participated. If memory serves, it was somewhere around 35%. I have the results somewhere on my home computer. I'll see if I can find them.

 

[Lear70]

Why don't you give the regional folks your name so they know not to give you a free ride on their "chock" when you want to get home/work.

Then again judging from your post you most likely don't need a ride since you were probably born and raised in MeUmphus and never left.

In my opinion, Pocono deserved the smack-down... I don't think it was aimed at regional pilots everywhere.

Like I said before, it's a SHARED responsibility. To hang *EVERYTHING* on the heads of the elected Leadership and say it's THEIR fault things don't get better because THEY are failing to Lead is unrealistic at best.

This isn't a dictatorship; it's not the military. Leadership could give the best speech explaining why voter turnout for a T.A. is important but they can't FORCE pilots to get off their duffs. At the end of the day, if the pilots just don't care, they won't vote / picket / participate / strike.

Yes, ALPA has a p*ss-poor track record for Leadership the last couple of decades. But you can't blame voter turnouts around 50% on the Leadership alone.

That's akin to blaming your speeding tickets on not having enough speed limit signs on your highway. You pass 2, get a ticket, the complain that the government didn't put up 4 or 5 or whatever would have really beat it into your head that it was important to slow down.

How many ways and how many times do you have to be asked/told to participate in your career before you take the initiative to get involved, stay educated, and do what the Leadership asks to help them achieve union goals?

Two-way street. Whether you like it or not.

 

[PCL_128]

But you can't blame voter turnouts around 50% on the Leadership alone.

Damn, I'd kill for 50% participation!!! Meeting participation is closer to 5% and LEC election participation is closer to 10-30% depending on the LEC.

 

[Lear70]

I was talking about airTran numbers, but I know PCL numbers were much, much lower.

 

[~~~^~~~]

We should probably keep in mind that career prospects weren't so hot in the past either. Pay and benefits at majors were fine, if you could get and keep a job there. Regionals hardly existed, so military service was needed to be competitive for an interview, and there were thousands of ex-military applicants. If you got hired, your airline might have been one of the many which no longer exist.

Choosing an airline career has always been a gamble; there used to be larger jackpots but fewer winners.

Tom makes another good point and many of us are living proof of the point he makes.

I'm optimistic about the future of the piloting profession. This DAL/NWA merger is part of the reason why.

When have you ever heard of management making statements like, "we will only do a merger if it meets our principles and protects the seniority of our employees?" When have you ever heard of the kind of incentive package being offered to sign on with a growth proposal?

The next generation of 100 to 130 seat aircraft will pull many people up to the majors. Even the regional jobs are not that bad.

Pay at all levels (even the regionals) is not what it used to be, but we are seeing signs of receovery there too. ASA's contract exceeded my expectations given the circumstances.

Everywhere I look I see positive signs.

Yes, there are threats. Oil and technology threaten to make our profession expensive and irrelevant. But these same factors push people to our more efficient jets and make people want to connect with others all over the planet. Aircraft are the only tools that can meet these needs.

We need to come together as a profession. Not just on a national scale, but on a global scale. ALPA seems to be making these associations across the Oceans, but still has not offered a hand to our brothers who fly within our own code. We need to ensure rigorous standardds continue to be applied and need to establish peer review boards as our friends in the medical profession have done.

We have work to do, but our profession is looking up.

 

[Flopgut]

You want to have a huge voter turnout? Pose this question to the membership: Do you think ALPA will eat it's own? I'll bet a grand more than 80% participate and 99% of them will say yes. Easy question with an obvious answer. That, however, is not what we're doing; we're asking hard questions in most cases. And to not vote might ought to be considered a vote, of sorts?

Three votes on retirement age, all headed toward the same, consistent result. That's unified! That is unity!

When you completely ignore a unified result, and can't manage expectations as to why, you've ceased to be a leader and the organization is screwed.

 

[PCL_128]

You want to have a huge voter turnout? Pose this question to the membership: Do you think ALPA will eat it's own? I'll bet a grand more than 80% participate and 99% of them will say yes.

I bet you'd get 25% participation at most with a split decision. Similar to the Age 60 polls, in other words.

And to not vote might ought to be considered a vote, of sorts?

No, not voting should just be considered not voting. It's lazy and irresponsible. We should expect more of our membership.

 

[waveflyer]

If we've always been apathetic- but haven't always had bottom barrell wages- what's different now?

 

[CitationUltra]

There is no conflict of interest. The interests of regional and mainline pilots coincide.Regional pilots can't provide enough revenue to support their own union structure. As it stands right now, the larger carriers within ALPA have to help support them. To be self-sufficient, a regional union would require dues somewhere along the lines of 4-5%, plus some extremely large initial assessments that no regional pilots could possibly afford. Basically, a "RALPA" organization is unworkable.

First in re the economics, you are probably right that regional pilots, with their low pay, could not support a "RALPA" structured and organized the way ALPA is.

As to the conflict of interest, the regional airline model is in significant ways, diametrically opposed to the objectives of ALPA's network airline constituents, and vice versa, major airline pilots are and will always be opposed to flying being outsourced to regional operations, corporate resources being allocated to regional operations, etc., etc.

Not recognizing these conflicts has been at the root of the failure of ALPA to represent the interests of regional airline pilots.

 

[BOOZENEWS]

There is a major difference, in any case. Doctors and lawyers are essentially self-employed professionals. Pilots, on the other hand, are employees. IN that regard, they are not much different than any other employee.

That doesn't say a whole lot. Pro athletes are employees too and in the labor catagory.