Pilots in the job market--

[netjetwife]

"NJWife,
You hit the nail on the head with that statement. The problem being
that there are enough desperate pilots out there and there are going to
be a lot more, especially if DAL goes under. That will add roughly
6,000 plus pilots to an already saturated job market. Not all will
continue to fly, but some will. These are the same guys who would not take a pay cut to save their own jobs." Spyguy

It seems to me that the ones who wouldn't take a pay cut know the value of their skill and the contribution they made to the company. I can't imagine them lining up for a job that pays less than some FAs make. Nor can I see pilots that have been accustomed to having union representation choose to "go it alone". If they have to start over, it's my guess that they'll see NJA as the "lesser of the evils" due to the union. In spite of the airline problems, doesn't business aviation continue to grow?

I should think pilots would be heartily sick of management teams that hang onto their lavish salaries while demanding cuts from the work force. Instead of addressing the real problems, too often the managers take the easy way out and blame the workers. Clearly there are some serious issues in aviation that need addressed. Perhaps the managers should apply themselves instead of constantly expecting the pilots to bail them out? The NJ pilots kept insisting that their wages were a cost of doing business that management had to deal with. That's their job. Other frac pilots should continue to say the same thing. When you stand together and yell loud enough, they are forced to listen. Good Luck!
NJW

 

[Jetz]

Did anyone read the AIN editorial?

Wish I could cut and paste it. Entitled "Unions are Detrimental to Fractional Industry", and one of the most lucid interpretations of the conditions in todays ever-changing business aviation environment, it is a must read!

Sam Kephart, BRAVO! Well said, and timely!

 

[Hawkxp]

This is my first Reply But the Delta Pilots are right on

First,we cannot let management continue to run companies into the ground and ruin a respectable career. There gross negligence has caused this problem they are now faced with. Pilots, Flight Attendants, and Maintenance are expected to bare the burden for there mistakes including loss of pension and lifestyle. I hope Delta goes out of business, not because I want to see unemployment in this company but because I want to show management that we as pilots are not going to take this anymore. If they go out of business the law of economics will take over and another company will come in to fill the void. Perhaps a better run company. Survival of the fittest. The pilots that will be furloughed may retire or may join Net jets but the bottom line is that many will fill in the gaping void left by a DEFUNCT Delta. Personally, I am so mad at United, for taking so much from the employees that I have boycotted them. I want them to go out of business because I think it can be done better. Employees deserve better. In my opinion the management at these companies could all be replaced and the industry would be better for it.

 

[netjetwife]

Excellent post, Hawkxp!

We all know the high degree to which pilots are held accountable. Why do the "top dogs" get off so easily? When things go wrong, they take their golden parachutes and move on, leaving a string of broken promises behind them. Management clamors for cuts from the rank and file, with dire warnings of the company going under, while they scramble to protect their own salaries, benefits and pensions from the ax they swing wildly about them. Adding insult to injury, they hold out their hands for huge bonuses for installing cost-cutting measures.

We saw it happen at AA when my husband was laid off right after 9-11. Management was calling for cuts and wage concessions before the dust had even settled--literally! My husband was of the strong opinion that it was all an excuse to reorganize and fly the regionals more. Knowing how underpaid those pilots are, who can doubt his theory?

 

[Hogprint]

Wish I could cut and paste it. Entitled "Unions are Detrimental to Fractional Industry", and one of the most lucid interpretations of the conditions in todays ever-changing business aviation environment, it is a must read!

Sam Kephart, BRAVO! Well said, and timely!

What were some of the highlights of the editorial?

Unions detrimental to the industry....I know of at least 2000 NJA pilots that would probably take issue with that.

 

[Semore Butts]

Already been on the company site

HEy Hog, I think it was already on the company site.

Some dip weeny ceo talking a bunch of crap about his having flown a million hours and blah blah blah.

MAybe it was even here that I saw it.

 

[FLYLOW22]

What were some of the highlights of the editorial?

Unions detrimental to the industry....I know of at least 2000 NJA pilots that would probably take issue with that.

2,348 NJA pilots think that a STRONG UNION has proven very UNdetrimental to their lives. I bet a few FLEX, FO and CS guys might even agree. Can 99% of the industry be wrong?

 

[netjetwife]

Yes, the article had been posted on the NJ board. Semore paraphrased it very well.

When you add in their family members, that's a lot of lives that have been impacted in a positive way!
Let's not forget that once the momentum is under way, change becomes easier.

A RISING TIDE SHOULD LIFT ALL BOATS

Paddling, however, is required. Man the oars! Or cards........in this case.

 

[Spyguy]

THIS SITE IS PISSING ME OFF!!! THIS IS THE SECOND TIME IN THREE DAYS THAT I HAVE WRITTEN A GOOD REPLY THAT HAS TAKEN MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES TO WRITE AND THE DARN SITE LOGS ME OFF. I LOG BACK ON AND MY POST DOESN'T APPEAR.
Has anyone else been having these problems?? I would love to reply but I am not going to write that message again.

 

[Spyguy]

ok the short, short version...do you..yes...do you?...yes...

I'll copy and paste this time. Who hasn't taken a pay cut since 9/11 or for that matter ever to my knowledge? Management and union management. Funny how that works out. It all boils down to everyone looking after their own.
I always love when you have another pilot who doesn't work for the company, grand stands and makes BOLD proclamations that the pilots ought to strike. They do so for solely personal and greedy reasons. You want the DALPA guys to strike to better your stance and working arrangements. Who cares if they have to get another job, just more numbers below me, so I don't get laid off if my company goes to the crapper.
ALPA is and has been one of the worst unions in the history of this nation, for all concerned. I can't speak for other majors, but Delta's management has been worse. There use to be a joke...what do Ron Allen and Lee Iacoko (misspelled I'm sure) have in common? They both turned their companies completely around in five years. I am not even going to touch Leo Mullins.
That being said what 1108 has achieved thus far has been great for all parties it seems. I hope it stays that way. I am very wary of the Teamsters and all that they represent though.
I use to laugh and laugh over the DAPLA's arguement that pilots should be paid like CEO's because each one could have been a CEO of their own company. That was a great one. Pilots aren't management, but that being said the company would not exist without the pilots AND all the other workers. A common ground must be found. It should be interesting to see how everything plays out. In the post 9/11 world the days of pilots getting 200,000 to 300,000 are gone. So should the 40 million in options that CEO's get. CEO's pay should be tied to the performance of the company. But that will never happen.


Make sure you copy and past if you take more than five minutes for a thoughtful reply. It will erase all that you type.

 

[semperfido]

A RISING TIDE SHOULD LIFT ALL BOATS

.

you must watch "MadMoney" too...it's one of Cramers favorite sayings

 

[Diesel]

I read the AIN editorial. I'll have to go look at it. I especially liked how he pointed out that most pax riding in the back of fractional aircraft got their money through illegal means.

I'll have to go look for it.

 

[Hogprint]

HEy Hog, I think it was already on the company site.

Some dip weeny ceo talking a bunch of crap about his having flown a million hours and blah blah blah.

MAybe it was even here that I saw it.

Oh, it was that screed...that was months ago it seems? He seemed pretty bitter. He must have been sold off! Probably thought he was too important for a sell off!

 

[pilotyip]

There is shortage of pilots on the lower end of the food chain, recruiting, pool turnover and hiring are starting to look like the pre-911 times. Presently also everyone of the on-demand operators in looking for pilts and this is in the slow season of the year. Fortunely we are in pretty good shape due to low turnover and have had no problems filling our classes.

 

[pilotyip]

This is repeat of an old post, but it fits here. This is a pilot board so saying anything in defense of management is like peeing into the wind, that it is going to come back to you. CEO's are not intentionally running airlines into the ground. They would very much like to succeed. For lack of other reason it would make their resume look great, they would be doing something no other CEO had ever done. Top management includes many besides the CEO, the CEO sets direction as requested by the board. The CEO has little control over the airline, the airline is run by regulation and union contracts. They are at the mercy of the purchasing public, who with Internet access has made the airline ticket a perfectly elastic commodity. There is little they can do inside their structure. Other high paid top management personnel, in Operations, Maintenance. Marketing, Legal, Finance, etc. have unique skills in dealing with large organizations. This makes them marketable when shopping for a job, unlike pilots whose skills are nearly universal. An issue of ATW in the last year had an article about “Airline Management a dying breed”, the article basically said no one wants to do it. The good track record CEO’s are going to other industries. With tremendous, payrolls, overhead burdens, and extremely low margins, there is no tried and true path to success. Most have tried to increase market share, but this has lead to low price and ridiculous breakeven load factors in 95% range. What is management supposed to do? Eliminating management will bring the end quicker for the airplane industry, and their salaries are insignificant to the airlines operating costs. Without management you could not operate the airline, The FAA would shut it down without approved Part 119 key management. Would the pilots step up and become management for free in their spare time. Why is every time, pilot salaries come up, they are immediately compared to top management. I saw an article in ATW in the 2002 that stated at DAL there were 17 members of top management made more than the top DAL Captain. The combined top 17 salaries equaled less than 1/6 of 1% of the combined pilot salaries. If management worked for free all pilots in the company would get a 1/10 of 1% raise. (for a $100K per year pilot that would be $3/wk increase in take home) Boy that raise would really make the pilot group happy. Top management possesses skills that allow them to move from job to job and command high salaries. And every one of these managers wants to see his/her airline prosper. They just can not do it. Are they paid too much? maybe, should they be paid more than pilots? how are you going to attract a good CEO at pilot wages?

 

[ozpilot]

Heres the AIN Article:

UNIONS ARE DETRIMENTAL TO FRACTIONAL INDUSTRY
Editor:
I am tired of AIN's coverage of the ongoing saga regarding IBT 1108 versus Netjets' management. Thank goodness the dispute is settled for now, but the pilot grousing issue won't go away.
No one forced these pilots to go to work for Netjets, and if the deal and working conditions are so bad, they should resign. If no pilots are available to replace them, I guess Netjets will have to soften the work rules for the available pool of pilots. However, I don't think that is the case.
I have more than a million air miles under my belt and, from my perspective, the same people who in no small part brought us the collapse of the major airlines will execute the identical slow-death routine on the fractional industry. This collective attitude will eventually destroy one of the better things to come along to rejuvenate business aviation and will make already hideous costs even more so.
Obviously, some of the passengers Netjets carries run public companies as personal-enrichment fiefdoms instead of for the benefit of their shareholders. Other passengers are just rich-either through earnings, inheritance or illegal means. I suspect that in some perverse way, these union flight crews justify their money and work-rule demands as a kind of a latter-day, union-enforced and mandated noblesse oblige. How disingenuous.
Samuel Kephart, CEO
Virtual Acumen
Spearfish, S.D.

 

[GVFlyer]

This is repeat of an old post, but it fits here. This is a pilot board so saying anything in defense of management is like peeing into the wind, that it is going to come back to you. CEO's are not intentionally running airlines into the ground. They would very much like to succeed. For lack of other reason it would make their resume look great, they would be doing something no other CEO had ever done. Top management includes many besides the CEO, the CEO sets direction as requested by the board. The CEO has little control over the airline, the airline is run by regulation and union contracts. They are at the mercy of the purchasing public, who with Internet access has made the airline ticket a perfectly elastic commodity. There is little they can do inside their structure. Other high paid top management personnel, in Operations, Maintenance. Marketing, Legal, Finance, etc. have unique skills in dealing with large organizations. This makes them marketable when shopping for a job, unlike pilots whose skills are nearly universal. An issue of ATW in the last year had an article about “Airline Management a dying breed”, the article basically said no one wants to do it. The good track record CEO’s are going to other industries. With tremendous, payrolls, overhead burdens, and extremely low margins, there is no tried and true path to success. Most have tried to increase market share, but this has lead to low price and ridiculous breakeven load factors in 95% range. What is management supposed to do? Eliminating management will bring the end quicker for the airplane industry, and their salaries are insignificant to the airlines operating costs. Without management you could not operate the airline, The FAA would shut it down without approved Part 119 key management. Would the pilots step up and become management for free in their spare time. Why is every time, pilot salaries come up, they are immediately compared to top management. I saw an article in ATW in the 2002 that stated at DAL there were 17 members of top management made more than the top DAL Captain. The combined top 17 salaries equaled less than 1/6 of 1% of the combined pilot salaries. If management worked for free all pilots in the company would get a 1/10 of 1% raise. (for a $100K per year pilot that would be $3/wk increase in take home) Boy that raise would really make the pilot group happy. Top management possesses skills that allow them to move from job to job and command high salaries. And every one of these managers wants to see his/her airline prosper. They just can not do it. Are they paid too much? maybe, should they be paid more than pilots? how are you going to attract a good CEO at pilot wages?

Good post pilotyip. You've explained in excellent detail why each of the legacy airlines must go through bankruptcy to restructure costs.

GV






~

 

[GEXDriver]

NetjetWife

Yes, the article had been posted on the NJ board. Semore paraphrased it very well.

When you add in their family members, that's a lot of lives that have been impacted in a positive way!
Let's not forget that once the momentum is under way, change becomes easier.

A RISING TIDE SHOULD LIFT ALL BOATS

Paddling, however, is required. Man the oars! Or cards........in this case.

You don't know yet if organized labor's increase of Netjet's operating costs will have the same effect it did on the airlines. It is particularly difficult to judge because the fractional industry is not yet a mature business and, at least according to SEC fillings, has never turned a profit.

You're words of today may come to be regarded much like United's ALPA chief Rick Dubinsky's 2000 statement, "We don't want to kill the golden goose. We just want to choke it by the neck until it gives us every last egg."

 

[FLYLOW22]

God forbid a pilot is allowed to make a career earning by just flying an airplane and not having 2 or 3 more fast food jobs on the side.

The $99 coast to coast biz model for the ailines is so far from broken that it is unfixable. Government subsidy is the only way to go from here... or we can trudge on to complete and utter meltdown as well.

As far as comparisons between the Frax industry and the 121 debacle... we don't strangle the Golden Goose... we fly it around. The Golden Goose is not going anywhere and enjoys the product that we deliver. NJA is not a Golden Goose. They are a middleman. If costs rise, the middleman gets to keep less. THe middlemanis not happy about that fact, hence the resistence towards labor to achieve livable wages. The middleman lost.

The middleman will continue to make money hand over fist and bury it between the sheets so that the world cannot follow it but who cares? We know that the amount of money being poured intot he machine vs. what is coming out is such a disparity that that idea of even worrying about where the money went hasn't even surfaced to our top 100 questions. We know the middleman can afford it.

Our 6's were not unreachable. Our goals were not outrageous. We achieved what we did because we sought reasonable expectations and did not settle for POSTA offers.

The pilots of NJA are not interested in the Labor/Management games. We are interested in taking care of our Owners and our families. The rest is ball bearings.

 

[GEXDriver]

As far as comparisons between the Frax industry and the 121 debacle... we don't strangle the Golden Goose... we fly it around. The Golden Goose is not going anywhere and enjoys the product that we deliver. NJA is not a Golden Goose. They are a middleman. If costs rise, the middleman gets to keep less. THe middlemanis not happy about that fact, hence the resistence towards labor to achieve livable wages. The middleman lost.

The middleman will continue to make money hand over fist and bury it between the sheets so that the world cannot follow it but who cares? We know that the amount of money being poured intot he machine vs. what is coming out is such a disparity that that idea of even worrying about where the money went hasn't even surfaced to our top 100 questions. We know the middleman can afford it.

Nice rhetoric, but virtually meaningless. Netjets operates in a niche market with no pricing power. The middleman has to stay in business for you to have a job. Your job is much closer to the airline model than the corporate one. You produce required revenue for your company to stay in business, we don't. You have a very expensive operating model which has not yet shown that it can be profitable. You man at four to five pilots per airframe, where corporate mans at three pilots or less. Up to 50% of your flying can be deadhead and therefore non productive. Average aircraft usage for corporate is about 450 hours per year; with your card programs you can fly each airplane over 1200 hours a year thereby decreasing the value of the owners asset at a much accelerated rate.

You are also apparently alleging that Bershire Hathaway is falsifying their Security and Exchange Commission filings, in which case you're lost anyways as your senior leadership will be going to Club Fed.