So..the pilot shortage is coming?

[livin'thesim]

BTW, stop with the "try and keep up" and "are you guys even airline pilots" and "you do understand how we negotiate right?" stuff. Good discussion doesn't require flippant little sarcastic remarks like that, it lowers your credibility and takes away from your point.

Yep...

 

[Lear70]

Absolutely correct. There is an old saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good". (Voltaire?)

Francois-Marie Arouet, pen name Voltaire, mid-1700's. My favorite quote regarding dealing with management:

"It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong."

The problem is that flight crews' primary purpose is safety, with profitability second. Therefore, we SHOULD NOT want to see large differences in job performance. We should not want individual pilots to excel.

We should want the whole group to excel. This leaves seniority as one of the few workable solutions.

Unfortunately, that's not how it works. Pilots either excel or not, each according to their talents AND willingness to work to remain highly proficient. One or the other isn't good enough, it takes both. Otherwise, they suck, and no amount of "seniority leveling the playing field" fixes that.

Nothing more painful than to sit in the right seat watching the doofus on your left do something stupid for the third time that trip, but not enough to compromise safety and having to do something about it, but rather having to just sit there and watch them make everything worse.

The seniority system may fix a lot of issues with our employment, but make no mistake, it does nothing to fix proficiency and ability.

As grown adults, however, we need to understand that WE LET MANAGEMENT DO THIS TO US.

IT IS OUR OWN FAULT for not being unified both locally and nationally as pilots.

We must accept the sunk costs and losses as irrecoverable, and build a new system for ourselves that protects our careers and incomes.

We need to own the fact that:
1) Many of us allowed ourselves to be duped by management
2) Many senior pilots sold out the junior (scope, b-scales)
3) Shiny jet syndrome. 'nuff said
4) The medical profession and the legal profession take ownership of the education and certification of new entrants to their field. We allow fly-by-night "academies" to dilute the labor supply.

These are just a few of the sins professional pilots have committed against their own profession.

Unless and until we are willing to deal with our own failings, our whining about what "management is doing to us" is useless.

Well-said.

 

[labbats]

I agree with the point of raising first year pay. I think we'd have a lot easier transition from one company to another with proper first year pay and all these seniority concerns would be much less of an issue.

Why on earth do we have to start at such low first year wages at the major level? I've never understood it. We've moved on from the military or spent years at a regional and paid our dues already.

With all the contracts being negotiated or about to be negotiated this will hopefully be addressed.

 

[Dumb Pilot]

Why on earth do we have to start at such low first year wages at the major level? I've never understood it. We've moved on from the military or spent years at a regional and paid our dues already..

I never understood this either, some companies don't even pay for the hotel during training, those are things that you don't see in airlines in other countries. Also the disparity between captain and F/O salary is greater here in the US than in many of the other so called first world countries.

 

[Lear70]

Because the senior eat their young...

 

[KNOTS]

The senior do eat their young... also, a lame excuse I've heard is "that's how it always was" and another gem: "Its to recoup the cost of training a new-hire" as if that justifies the low pay.

 

[waveflyer]

Good post livin the sim- I agree 100% with flattening the earning curve- that would solve a lot of our issues without diluting seniority earned.

 

[livin'thesim]

The senior do eat their young... also, a lame excuse I've heard is "that's how it always was" and another gem: "Its to recoup the cost of training a new-hire" as if that justifies the low pay.

I would be willing to concede first-year pay to be low because of the probationary aspect, but second year through top of scale should be very small change.

Reducing the scale difference also gives pilot groups more leverage, since mgmt knows that more senior pilots at least have the option of quitting and moving on.

 

[pilotyip]

and the airlines have lost a combined $!1B+ in the first half of the year, where is all this money going to come from to give pilots all this money?

 

[jonjuan]

and the airlines have lost a combined $!1B+ in the first half of the year, where is all this money going to come from to give pilots all this money?

From 2nd half profits. Just watch and learn, pops.