You are full of it. Really, you are. We based a lot of our salary increase on United's, and you based yours off of ours. To say otherwise makes you look "Nuts" (to quote good ole Herb). EVERYONE looks around at their "peer's" pay while negotiating. What, you didn't? You just looked at your books and saw $6 billion in cash and said "well, we deserve this much....." RIIIIIIIIGHT. And, we don't care if you don't care how much we make, rather we just want your pay rates to stay the same, so we can compare your planes to ours, and then regain as much pay as we can. Eventually it will all be back to normal, and pilots looking for a job (without the PFT aspect) will look at our variety of planes and routes and once again decide that it is better than your well paying "regional" style flying job. At a certain stage in your life, the more legs you fly, the worse it feels. The senior guys at the regionals have it worst, since they are probably very tired of long multiple leg days. Well, that is exactly your model. MOST of your trips have multiple leg days, and most regional pilots want the high pay but would rather have an easier schedule as they grow older, like one leg a day or maybe two. How many SWA Captains left pre-9-11 for UAL? A lot. Have a FANTASTIC next trip.
Bye Bye--General Lee
Sorry to tell you General - Delta's (as well as others) payscales may have been studied for a general awareness of the state of the industry - but they were not used as yardstick for a minimum or maximum pay rate. Southwest has always negotiated payrates based on maintaining a sustainable profit. We have never had a revolving door of CEOs who were only interested in short term stock increases who would concede pay raises they knew were not sustainable.
I sincerely doubt you're intelligent enough to really understand what I'm asking here: When is the last time a Southwest pilot took a paycut? When was the last time you took a paycut?
You said
" And, we don't care if you don't care how much we make, rather we just want your pay rates to stay the same, so we can compare your planes to ours, and then regain as much pay as we can. Eventually it will all be back to normal, and pilots looking for a job (without the PFT aspect) will look at our variety of planes and routes and once again decide that it is better than your well paying "regional" style flying job"
You do understand there is no normal in this industry - don't you? Things may never go back to the way they were. You say pilots looking for a job will look at your variety of planes and routes. I hope they do - but most pilots will go to the first major that hires them. Few pilots are presented with simultaneous multiple major airline job offers.
Your statement that Southwest is based on a regional airline model just shows your ignorance. Why do you have such an interest in Southwest, its employees, or its business? How many Southwest pilots do you see on every thread attacking Delta and its business model? Do you really think it's because Delta has a superior business? Or do you think it may be that we do not feel threatened by your business model? You and your alter ego, Scope repeatedly spout the mantra of PFT, mutiple legs, etc, etc whenever you run out of intelligent ideas to share. Your posts just turn emotional - much like an adolescent. And much like an adolescent, the real reason for your tirades are a fear of Southwest's success. Deny it if you like, but it's the only reason for your constant condemnations of all things Southwest.
At the end of the day I really don't lose any sleep over it. I'm happy here and don't feel the need to disparage Delta to feel better about my self. I am, however, appreciative that I have many friends at Delta. If I didn't, one might believe that you and Scope are representative of their pilot group. How sad that would be for a group of professionals.
