Sorry, but no one deserves half a mil to fly an airplane. ~$250K for a senior capt. should be the theoretical ceiling as its commensurate with the skill and responsiblity. The rest should be allocated to the rest of the junior pilots who need the work and money.
Actually, it's not quite like this. I don't like to get into the money discussions, because it
is a little crass (plus I don't want Zonejumper thinking I'm compensating for "shortcomings," 'cause actually, MY "shortcoming" is where I can actually
hang my hat and cheap rayon tie, if you know what I mean <wink><wink>), but there's plenty of salary to go around here. A junior captain (me, for instance) with ten years of service makes just over $225k MINIMUM wth our latest 2% payraise. That's for the bare minimum of flying your line (100 tfp/mo). That's me--quality of life and all. If you want to work it, you can average 130 - 140 tfp/mo (Do the math yourself). Hard chargers can make even more that that. Senior F/O's make 70% of that ($158k) MINIMUM. We even have "player" F/O's pushing the high 200ks closing on 300k. There's no need for "allocating" the money for junior pilots.
'Course you actually work for it here. No one sits around on their ass doing nothing and collecting a paycheck at SWA.
That's the power of having more efficient pilots and leaner manning. You can pay your pilots more and still make money. What Fubijaakr advocated above, and what ALPA preaches, is complete crap and counter to any enduring business model: cap the amount of work an employee can do so you need more employees. That is ludicrous. That's ALPA working
against the company instead of with it.
I mean, what would you have us do, Fubi? Hire extra guys off the street so we can spread out our work (and money) just to stick it to the company? Classic ALPA. We could pay pilots to sit at home on reserve and do nothing. Then there's no extra flying for anyone. Yo, chucklehead: This is NOT a charity business. Our model works well for everyone here: we make money, the employees are well-compensated, we grow our product, and
then we hire more employees as needed, and compensate them just as well. We don't hire extra folks just to satisfy a national union's agenda. That hamstrings the company's efficiency and hurts all of us.
That's why I work here, and not there. Oh yeah, also I enjoy myself here, and for the most part, have outstanding and fun-to-be-around coworkers. That was true when I started here, and we weren't the best paid. That's why this is the only airline I've ever applied to.
Bubba
