Parker, biting off more than he can chew?

[PHXFLYR]

Youre point being...???? Oh, sorry you don't have one.


PHXFLYR

 

[TWA Dude]

Nope! Just my opinion of your talk.

Fine, then. Your opinion of me disgusts me. Boy, this is a lot more fun than actually exchanging ideas and opinions!

By the way thanks for showing up on the 16th of Nov. to support your bretheren... Oh! Wait you couldn't make it because you said you only had 3 days off. Thanks.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe I just didn't want to be anywhere near you? Since my opinion disgusts you I'd think you'd be pleased.

 

[Green]

Youre point being...???? Oh, sorry you don't have one.


PHXFLYR

PHXFLYR

Hey I hate to call out a fellow AWA pilot but you are flat out wrong. Prior to 9-11 SEVERAL legacy carriers had hundreds of pilots EASILY making over 300k/year. Many UAL captains made $340/hr, Dal 345/hr, and US Airways A-330 captains made over $300 per hour. American Airlines management had offered AA pilots dal +1% but the pilots turned it down expecting to get more. Then 9-11 hit and we all know what happened.

The reality is that even with their ups and downs those pilots made vastly more than AWA pilots. Not even in the same ballpark. We are not talking about the fabled pre-deregulation days we are talking about pre-911.

 

[Green]

...and that's just it ...you won't. Those $350,000 paychecks,if there were any such things, were earned prior to the advent of deregulation. Working for an airline back then was much like working for the local utility company (ie your costs go up well, by golly, just file some paperwork with the CAB and raise your ticket prices. Problem solved.) Deregulation has eliminated that option. It is now market forces at work and the market has spoken. "$500 dollars and no more for my ticket" Companies either adjust to the realities of the new marketplace or they cease to exist, plain and simple. I don't like it any more than the next person,but it is what it is.

PHXFLYR

Fyi even after 9-11, Airborne Express pilots still routinely make over 300k/year. I'm just curious how you could be a captain in the industry and you never heard that widebody pilots were making 300+/year at the majors pre-911. strange?

 

[Bringupthebird]

...and that's just it ...you won't. Those $350,000 paychecks,if there were any such things, were earned prior to the advent of deregulation. Working for an airline back then was much like working for the local utility company (ie your costs go up well, by golly, just file some paperwork with the CAB and raise your ticket prices. Problem solved.)

PHXFLYR

Well, not exactly. You may have worked for an airline that was not permitted to serve certain markets and thus didn't generate the revenue to pay exhorbitant salaries. But regulation did restrict the number of competitors and kept fares high, but the rationale was that a stable industry would embrace technological advances and the industry would grow. When the airlines abandoned the SST and decided to sit back and get fat, then the government decided that it no longer needed regulation.

A few "pioneering" airline executives decided to experiment with relatively low time pilots flying jets (RJ's) and proved that they weren't getting what they paid for and that these newbies could fly jets just as safely (apparently) as mainline pilots. A few cooperative bankruptcy judges later and you've got the situation we have now where mainline pilots are trying to justify their wages in the face of unprecedented RJ expansion. That's a tough sell.

Now the size gap has narrowed as the E-190 becomes the bellweather for all future airline pay scales. And the classes at Jet Blue and Us Airways did not fail to attract enough participants, so I guess the pay was okay with enough people to get the job done.

I don't begrudge the guy who pulled down 300K, I just don't see the same set of circumstances that allowed that to occur, ever happening again. But some nostalgic DAL pilots do, and I fear they will have their nostalgia and company loyalty used against them.