It's time...

[pilotyip]

Depends

Capt. M, the market will adjust if the wages will not support the pilot base by attracting qualified applicants. Like wise in Des Moines, $65K might be the market rate. Adam Smith rules.

 

[mrtoy2]

After 9/11, the industry was hurt by a lack of customers flying. The industry responded by lowering fares (supply and demand yes I really do get it). This lead to a few carriers becoming insolvent (U.S. Air and UAL being the big ones). Then the rest of the industry "smelled blood in the water" and used their fares to try to hurt the insolvent carriers to the point of extinction. But the US govt. stepped in and helped the weaker carriers with loans and grants. I was at one of those carriers and am grateful that that did happen. The problem, I think, lies in the bankrupt carriers right now. I do believe that corporate darwinism should happen to a point. That point is that I don't believe that some carriers should be allowed to charge fares that, outside of bankrupcy, would be predetory. Staying in bankrupcy for as long as some carriers have without a business plan is criminal, IMHO. My original point was that we, and it doesn't just have to be pilots. Other groups should also put their foot down. You are exactlly right about this job not needing anything more than a High School education level. Anyone who knows me personally understands my grief about this. Unfortunately, our industry "requires" a college degree. The way the industry is headed, those 10 year salaries of $100k aren't going to be there in 10 years. I used to be that guy flight instructing saying to myself that I wont care about pay as long as I am flying something that I like. Well, reality has in fact set in. My reality right know involves consuting (furlough). Watching the industry fall apart is frustrating to say the least. Watching employee groups get their pensions and other benefits get ripped out is frustrating. Not doing anything about it is shameful of all of us. I'm NOT advocating a strike in any way! All I'm saying is that there needs to be pressure from within all of the carriers to have a plan, not just a plan to bleed other carriers dry with our paychecks (as a whole not just pilots in general. It takes more than pilots to move an aircraft.).

 

[dogg]

Jet jobs would be for those pilots that had obtained the rank of at least journyman.. say after 6000hrs or so....

Ooooohhh bogey bogey.......cuz you need 6000 hours to be able to fly the mighty jet.....give me a break

Well lets see, that is not what I said. What i said was that you would need to obtain a "journeyman card" before you would be allowed to fly that type of equipment and maybe it should be 8000 hrs.....The problem for you mega d is that you dont have an understanding of how a union or should I say a real union works....

You could fly that jet after 500 hrs or less and do it as well as the guy with 8000hrs but why would we as the union allow that. It would have direct bearing on how much our hours and years of service would be worth.....Which is exactly what is happening right now......

Every airline is taking 500-1000hr pilots and inserting them into the right seat of 90 seat jets where they do a good, safe and efficient job. And after a couple thousand hrs they insert them into the left seat where they do a good, safe and efficient job. And we all know that if you can safely fly 90 seats so can you safely fly 290 seats. And all of this is possible because sceduled 121 airlines have lots of support and structure and and they are operating very safe technologically advanced aircraft. And training now is focused much more on how we mitigate a problem and get back to normal thus increasing our safety margins during abnormal operations by a huge margin....

So why would any airline manager who is tasked with delivering a cost effective work force be willing to pay what pilots used to be paid and I am talking about the value of the dollar not the number of dollars(but that is a whole other lesson). If I am that manager I will pay that 500 hr copilot 25-40,000 a year and that 2500 hr captain 55-85,000 a year and I will slowly as they become available add larger aircraft to my fleet so that I will eventually have 100-120 seats being flown for those wages with slight increases over time.....And the managers at the larger airlines with whom I have agreemnts to operate these airplanes will notice this and they will begin to consider my wages for seats as "market wages" and they will negotiate along those lines.
And out of nowhere 125,000-135,000 becomes a darn good living and that is where all passenger pilot wages are headed. Unlike our real union brothers who have a card in their pocket that entitles them to a certain level of respect and compensation for their years and years of experience, we have nothing. What value does a 8 year 8000 hr airbus co-pilot have when his job can be done just as well by a new entrant in the field..NONE... And what value does an 18 year, 18,000 hr 757captain have when he too can be replaced by a guy with one sixth his time and experience...NONE.....
Somewhere along the way, the current big unions missed the opportunity to creat a "guild based union" and instead opted for the current, self-serving mess that has done nothing to protect the value of time and experience for its members....It is done and there is no going back.... This time the job has changed forever and the only pilots that will really make money are the hired guns that haul billions of dollars of revenue around the world every night for the few select carriers and even they had better watch their back doors carefully...Time to move on to better times somewhere else...