Acme Airlines thought they had it made. They had really low costs and that gave them a big advantage. Their low costs allowed them to successfully bid on contract flying for multiple major airlines and rapidly grow into a big company. One of the big reasons for their low costs was their employees. Airlines require a lot of employees to function and labor is generally the highest or second-highest cost at any airline. From a business standpoint, ACME was proud of their ability to generate a lot of productivity from their employees while paying them very low wages. Even in an industry where wages were low, ACME was even lower. The real employee-bargain was pilots. Pilots spent a lot of money and time getting qualified for their profession and in most industries they would be paid pretty well based on their education and qualifications. The airline industry, however, was somewhat unique. The industry paid very well at the top of the profession but pilots needed experience to get there. There always seemed to be a lot more pilots than really good pilot jos. This created an environment where new pilots were willing to work for very low wages and benefits to gain experience. The supply-demand equation had pretty much always been on the side of the airlines and ACME took full advantage of that fact. ACME seemed confident that there would always be a ready-available supply of fresh pilots (and other employees) willing to work cheaply and they based their business model on this assumption.
Then one day things started to change and ACME started to have a problem. ACME had big commitments to do a lot of flying for their major airline customers. They were growing quickly and they needed a lot of new pilots. In addition to the growth, pilots were leaving ACME for better jobs at other airlines. At first it didn't seem like a big deal. Pilots had always left ACME and they had just hired more new ones....no problem. Now though, it started to become harder to find the large number fo new pilots required. A year ago ACME had noticed that there were less new applicants who met their hiring minimums and they had to lower their experience requirements to fill their new-hire classes. In the last few months, even this wasn't enough. All of a sudden there just didn't seem to be enough pilot applicants around. People didn't show up for interviews, people quit before their classes even started for other jobs, and new pilots were even leaving during training or shortly after training to take other jobs. This wasn't good, classes weren't being filled and ACME was starting to have trouble covering all of their existing flying let alone staffing the new airplanes that kept coming.
What now? The obvious solution was to push the existing pilots harder to get more productivity. Schedules got worse; less days off, less time at home, minimum rest overnights, forced work on days off, duty day extensions, cancelled vacations, etc. This helped for awhile but then things came unglued. Attrition and sick leave usage, fatigue calls and mechanical write-ups picked way up. The airline's core of senior pilots who had been there for years because their seniority afforded them good quality of life began to bail out when the schedules went downhill. ACME became known as a sweatshop and new pilots avoided the company like the plague. ACME really had a problem now. They couldn't hire, train and maintain enough pilots to get the flying done and the cancellations started; a few at first then lots of them. ACME had now become unreliable and their major airline partners were upset. How could this be? The majors had loved them when their costs were rock bottom and they awarded them the flying. ACME was in danger of being in breech-of-contract with their customers and to make matters worse, they were now losing money. How could this have happened? Where did all the pilots go? Wasn't there ALWAYS supposed to be a huge supply of new pilots willing to work for nothing?
Where did ACME go wrong and what can they do about it? I'll allow you, Dear Readers, to write the next chapter of the ACME story on Flighinfo.
Then one day things started to change and ACME started to have a problem. ACME had big commitments to do a lot of flying for their major airline customers. They were growing quickly and they needed a lot of new pilots. In addition to the growth, pilots were leaving ACME for better jobs at other airlines. At first it didn't seem like a big deal. Pilots had always left ACME and they had just hired more new ones....no problem. Now though, it started to become harder to find the large number fo new pilots required. A year ago ACME had noticed that there were less new applicants who met their hiring minimums and they had to lower their experience requirements to fill their new-hire classes. In the last few months, even this wasn't enough. All of a sudden there just didn't seem to be enough pilot applicants around. People didn't show up for interviews, people quit before their classes even started for other jobs, and new pilots were even leaving during training or shortly after training to take other jobs. This wasn't good, classes weren't being filled and ACME was starting to have trouble covering all of their existing flying let alone staffing the new airplanes that kept coming.
What now? The obvious solution was to push the existing pilots harder to get more productivity. Schedules got worse; less days off, less time at home, minimum rest overnights, forced work on days off, duty day extensions, cancelled vacations, etc. This helped for awhile but then things came unglued. Attrition and sick leave usage, fatigue calls and mechanical write-ups picked way up. The airline's core of senior pilots who had been there for years because their seniority afforded them good quality of life began to bail out when the schedules went downhill. ACME became known as a sweatshop and new pilots avoided the company like the plague. ACME really had a problem now. They couldn't hire, train and maintain enough pilots to get the flying done and the cancellations started; a few at first then lots of them. ACME had now become unreliable and their major airline partners were upset. How could this be? The majors had loved them when their costs were rock bottom and they awarded them the flying. ACME was in danger of being in breech-of-contract with their customers and to make matters worse, they were now losing money. How could this have happened? Where did all the pilots go? Wasn't there ALWAYS supposed to be a huge supply of new pilots willing to work for nothing?
Where did ACME go wrong and what can they do about it? I'll allow you, Dear Readers, to write the next chapter of the ACME story on Flighinfo.
