UAL Pilots to wear leather jackets.

[Rez O. Lewshun]

Saw a UAL pilot with a leather jacket. Asked another UAL pilot about it... UAL is getting gibson and barnes leather jackets. However the UAL pilot above modified his own leather jacket, before the sizing and ordering.

Jokingly the thought was if "we" are all going to leather the DAL guys will look quite dandy in thier double breasted leather coats. Ankle length?

Finally, what is up with MESA wearing windbreaker jackets....??

 

[Flyerjosh]

Gibson and Barnes will probably make you a great deal on a leather jacket that has "independence air" embroidered inside of it...

I'm kind of surprised that UAL is going that route... doesn't seem to fit with their tailored, pin-stripe gold epaulet, corporate suit image...

 

[Tarzan]

Wish we got to wear leather jackets. There isn't enough room to carry a jacket I can actually use in my overnight luggage. Be nice to pull the shoulder boards and wear it out to eat instead of freezing my butt off on the way to find food.

 

[User546]

I'm just happy that in their cash-strapped, bankruptcy-flirting airline, they are finding the need to buy all new leather jackets for all their pilots. All the meanwhile asking for concessions and wage cuts.

 

[rfresh]

I read in the Los Angeles Times yesterday how UAL messed up with long pax lines somewhere back east. The city had to send in 4 buses so the pax could wait in the heated buses. A UAL spokesperson said they did indeed screw up, that they didn't handle the crowds correctly, etc. They said we've been in bankrupty for almost 3 years and want to come out and treat our customers the right way!! If they don't know how to service their customers without making them wait in long lines by now...they never will!

The same management team has driven UAL to the brink of going out of business for the past 8 years and yet they are still at the top making all the bad decisions (aka the 'Ted' disaster) and voting themselves million Dollar bonuses. The newspapers reported this year that 8 of the top management executives each got over 1M in bonuses! When asked how can they do that they replied that they didn't 'want to do that' but they 'had to' in order to keep the top executives from leaving!! Are these the same executives who dreamed up the Ted fleet?

 

[pilotyip]

This is a repeat, but it fits. 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. Bonuses and preimum pay are needed to retain top talent. 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 past couple years 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.

 

[Jack Schitt]

Valid point Yip, but here's the kicker. Pilots aren't awarded golden parachutes when they make bad decisions. Management pukes are rewarded even when they screw up.

 

[rfresh]

Also, I think that for the salaries the top executives are making, there would be a long line of people waiting to step in and take over their positions...even without the promise of a bonus.

And let's not forget who approves 1M+ executive bonuses - the executives themselves!!

 

[C-150ETOPS]

UAL using Gibson & Barnes?

I would hope whoever decided on them and the material isn't as retarded as AA was.


Here is a snippet from AA's leather jacket site

"Your jacket will be made from black, chrome-tanned, aniline-dyed, lightly-pigmented goatskin from Baluchistan. "

"Baluchistan"? YGBSM

Not too far after 9/11, some genius clothes AA (and maybe now UAL) pilots with a material from an area where if they aren't directly harboring Bin Laden, they basically support his view that we should die.
Now throw in the fact that the goat herder probably also had carnal relations with the first owner of the leather, and I think I will stick with the polyester.

Maybe they can make our neckties out of the same red/white "picnic tablecloth" scarfs the guys wear on the most wanted sites.

 

[pilotyip]

Jack as stated in the original posts, pilots are interchangeable, their skills are not unique, any professional pilot with proper training can do the job. The same is not true of someone who can run an extremely large organization. How are you going to attract someone with the talent to save UAL without industry standard compensation package?