It seems the majority of the replies to my original post agree, or has experienced the eroding of pay and conditions as I have.
Firstly I did not write this post expecting the CEO’s, airline owners, or management to read my concerns and to change things. But I needed to vent my anger and concerns, and hear what others thought of the way the industry was going.
Safety Guy
Yes things are that bad with my Airline and I believe many others. If I was to stand down, or refuse to go into Captains discretion my contract would be terminated. Maybe not on paper for that reason, but I would be down the road, or labeled a trouble maker with management gunning for me. Its not by choice I fly fatigued, it’s to keep my job.
In regard to retirement plans our company does not have one. Is that another eroding of conditions, of coarse I’ve read many reports of people loosing their retirement funds. Are you protected if an airline declares itself bankrupt, or goes into chapter 11, or just states they do not have sufficient funds to payout everyone’s retirement fund due to a bad investment.
Joyce Tick
When you cannot stand yourself or your crew down due to fatigue,
When you cannot refuse to extend your duty time into ‘Commanders Discretion’,
When you cannot refuse to take an aircraft with a known fault, (illegal but operationally safe)
When you cannot take extra fuel above the computer generated flight plan,
All without intimidation and threat of contract termination. You can hardly make professional decisions, more like compromises to save your job and career, to the detriment of safety to the aircraft and your passengers.
Also Dogma is right, it is more difficult to act professionally when your fatigued, low moral.
Guybrush
Yes they should reduce management’s huge salaries and lead by example. They should not increase their salaries, and / or vote themselves bonuses while preaching to their staff how revenues are down, and pay cuts are necessary, and no it would not solve the company’s financial problems.
The fact is airline management should be increasing airfares to a realistic level, not cutting all their staffs pay and conditions (29 GBP London – Berlin return, 19 GBP London – Paris return) no wonder their revenues are down, no wonder their staff are paid cr@p. How about managements pay.
The only way you can justify their huge salaries is if they were to take responsibility for their actions, as pilots are.
E.g. If the CEO, BOD, DFO increase your hours up to regulation maximums (as many airlines have including my own) [are they meant to be maximum temporarily to keep the schedule going due unforeseen resignations, or maximum to be rostered every year]
Then the pilots complain of operating fatigued. Management ignore fatigue and rostering concerns. An aircraft has a serious accident; the accident investigation report cites fatigue and heavy rostering as one of many factors. The Captain faces charges of manslaughter. Shouldn’t the CEO, BOD, and DFO also face charges of manslaughter? If not how can you justify such high salaries and bonuses for no risk or accountability. (i.e. 4x, 6x Captain B744 salary or more).
What salary do you expect to make in 10 years time, 20 years time. Now if management cut that by say 30%, and cut some of your allowances after you’ve been in the company for a few years, are you still going to be as excited and upbeat as now about being an airline pilot.
You’ve read these forums and all the complaints. At least you know what you are getting into. When I started I didn’t know things would get this bad.
Skyclamp
Not a bad idea. One ton per flight, approx, 4 flights per week, 16 flights per month = 4800 GBP ($9000 USD) per month extra fuel burnt. You do not need to take extra fuel above the company flight plan, that’s what the contingency fuel is there for. Maybe we should use it.
Will it get my pay and conditions back No, but at least the management shafting myself, my profession, my career, my livelihood and my family won’t get as big a bonus for cost cutting. How long can we continue to act professional when our management treat us like a liability to the company and shaft us accordingly?
To the other flippant comments made (no id’s mentioned)
I suspect you are either;
1 Non pilots
2 Pilot management
3 Management
4 Working for one of the few decent airlines remaining (as mentioned in the original post) if so please advise which airline you work for. We would like to apply. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind your management finding out you ID; it could mean a pay cut and rapid promotion.
5 Captain on MS Flight Simulator 2004 (B747-400)
I like ZQA297/30’s encounter with a load mouthed passenger.
This job has hours of boredom in the cruise, plus hours more boredom in hotel rooms.
However I believe those commenting on how easy the job is, twiddling a few knobs in the cruise, actually know little about it. Certainly doing an approach into an airport with foul weather, high terrain, unfamiliar ATC procedures after an 8 – 16 hour flight while fatigued I would not call easy.
Or been descended below MSA near high terrain by the controller as he’s tired, or at one of the many airports throughout the world where ATC standards are well below what many would expect acceptable. Perhaps you only fly domestic in the Southwest of the USA.
Or you took CFP fuel because of company policy, or the MZFW would not allow more, or your company frowns upon offloading pax or freight to decrease the ZFW. Then 500nm from destination which is reporting marginal weather, and so is your fuel alternate. Your going to arrive with 200kg above your minimum divert fuel. You do not know how much holding to expect. Do you divert to an enroute alternate, with no agent, they don’t speak your language, there may be no one certified to dispatch your aircraft type, and as you’re rostered right up to max duty time, you may exceed your max allowable discretion if you tried to refuel and make your destination, or the paxs will have to be found hotel accommodation, or remain on the aircraft for over 12 hours until you can continue, because they do not have visas. Easy job isn’t it, just twiddle a few knobs.
Your aircraft has an uncontrollable engine fire, or cargo hold fire, or engine disintegrated, rupturing a fuel line, with associated fire. Would you consider it easy to decide whether to ditch in the middle of the ocean, or continue to the nearest airport and risk the wing burning through?
If you had a fuel leak, or uncontrollable fire, would you land at the nearest airport, 100M vis, no ILS serviceable on the into wind runway, 30 kt wind in blowing snow. Braking action medium or poor, Would you try to land on the into wind runway using a VOR approach, or extend your approach from the other direction taking a 20Kt tailwind for an ILS, or fly to another airport 100nm further on. Your wings on fire, will you make it, will you see the runway, will you skid off the end, there’s no auto land available. I don’t think that would be easy. Go and think about that for a couple of hours, ask the load mouthed passenger, but get back to us soon because you can’t sleep on it.
I doubt your are an airline pilot at all. You certainly have not had to make any real decisions. Maybe you are paid what your worth.
But I feel relieved to think there are passengers in the back like you I could call up by PA to take over as it’s so easy for you.
Or relieved to think I could just do a PA asking any passenger with MS Flight Simulator 2004 time (B747-400 preferably) to come up and twiddle a few buttons and get us on the ground safely. What is the airline captain or FO trained for, and paid for, not twiddling a few buttons in the cruise.
Now to get serious again.
Firemen are not paid their salary to sit around the station waiting for a fire; they’re paid to fight fires if and when they occur. Yet they are expected to train and be ready for that occurrence, but if there are no fires, then they are paid to sit around at the station.
Soldiers are not paid to march around in circles, and drive tanks around the countryside, but that’s what they do until they’re called upon. Is that your perception of them though?
It’s not mine.
CRM courses and Command training generally push the fact that you are not just a pilot, but you have to be a manager to carry out your duties as expected by the airline.
While some of these scenarios are drastic and I have not, and hope I never have to make those decisions, can any of us guarantee we will not be confronted with something similar throughout our career? As to the less drastic scenarios, these types of decisions do happen, and you will have to justify your decisions to management.
It’s not always easy, it may end up damned difficult, and it’s made even more difficult by constant fatigue. I don’t take it for granted,
but management do.
So I think either the day to day, flight by flight, operational and safety decisions should be able to be made by the captain and crew of the flight, their pay and conditions should reflect this responsibility, and they should not be rostered to fly fatigued.
Otherwise let the CEO’s, BOD’s and management keep there huge salary’s, and should (God forbid) an accident occur, anonymously if required send in all memos, operation orders, letters of intimidation relating to the safe operation of the airline to the victims lawyers and let them be accountable in a Court of Law.
I also strongly believe the relevant CAA’s, FAA’s, and DCA’s of the world should also be held accountable if their extensions to duty time are causing fatigue among crew, that contributes to an accident.
They seem more likely to target a light aircraft that wandered into controlled airspace without a clearance, endangering one or two conflicting aircraft, or an owner of a homebuilt doing a low pass over his friends house in the countryside, endangering only his own life (no not me, just an example), yet they allow 10,000 – 20,000 air transport aircraft to fly throughout the world each day, many with fatigued crew, endangering 5 million paxs.
As I said in the original post, either make CAP371 mandatory, or remove it completely, they know only a handful of airlines abide by it.
Finally to those who say ‘If you don’t like it vote with your feet’, I intend to, but at a time I choose, not when my company sacks me.
I’m sure I’ll keep reading PPrune occasionally just to confirm I’ve made the right decision. I’m sure there will be many pilots complaining how bad things are in ten years time, and I’ll be able to say; well you knew what you were getting into, just look at the PPrune forums in 2004.