Sonic-the highly acclaimed Southwest has been heavily unionized for many years. Check out the pay rates, and have been good for quite a while. The more senior/older pilots ahd other employees have also done well with stock and profit sharing.
US hub-and-spoke airlines (AMR, United, Delta, NWA, CO, USAirways...) requiring passengers and crews (sometimes hanging around over two hours at hubs) to change planes most of the time, were NEVER designed for high employee productivity. Managements strongly denied it, but they all used pattern bargaining when negotiating contracts-they always looked at the competition. High business fares were apparently the foundation for these wasteful hub operations. After a 10 or 12-hour duty day with short, intense legs flown requiring three or even four rushed changes of aircraft (weather delays in the c0ckp1t can quickly result in no time to eat between flights), we feel very productive and tired, but sometimes have logged only about 6 hours of 'block time'. Even with seven hours, indefinite weather delays between the dep. gate and runway in the summer can threaten our arrival contingency fuel-we must choose between running both engines+APU in an attempt to cool a really hot plane, or making it unbearable for over 100 people. Winter can mean swiftly changing weather and fuel requirements (do the destination and alternates still have required vis, crosswinds and good braking action?). Never mind guessing at crowded skies or holding over the Great Lakes or eastern US. Frustrating, even IF we had more than five hours of sleep in a hotel.
But upper management wants the public to believe that it is the unions' fault that these inefficient operations were created and are still, after decades, the heart and soul of daily business, except at Southwest Airlines, which carefully designed linear routes, sort of like the railroads. Another major US passenger carrier seems to have made most of its profit years ago by flying several cargo planes-but its Pacific route authority was never fully utilized, and the reasons have remained a mystery to many. Was freight not fashionable?
Southwest's 737 pilots are the highest-paid 737 aviators in the US! How is this possible, at an airline which is splashed throughout the media as a "low cost carrier"? and Southwest has been HEAVILY UNIONIZED for MANY YEARS. CEOs at other airlines don't want the public to be aware of this paradox.
Don't think so? Just check the history over there.... Employee costs, which were far better than at the rock-bottom-paying upstart airlines, have not prevented Southwest's brilliant success. They seem to have almost no hub-and-spoke operations. Productivity, linear route structures, one aircraft type and high staff/employee morale seem to be the key elements, concepts which seem lost on typically indifferent, conventional airline managements in the US, which now pretend that their hubs-and-spoke networks can be productive-if staff makeup for both these inefficient hubs and high fuel prices by taking unending paycuts. Some airlines attempt to create the superficial facade of a caring management. But unlike Southwest years ago, there is no steep discount to own shares of company stock, and half-hearted attempts, if any, to promote a true team spirit while at work. Which airline CEOs would go down to the ramp and load some bags for a while, or fly around a little, chatting with employees? Who are these "leaders" really fooling? Most of these so-called "leaders" have no true background in actual airline operations, and little interest in real aviation, as Howard Hughes, Bob Six, Juan Trippe (?) and Eddie Rickenbacker had long ago. Continental Airlines might have a pretty good CEO (Bethune) who might have saved the company years ago: no matter how typical he now appears, he earned his pilot ratings and has ferried B-757s from the factory. And American Trans Air was created by an 'operations type', Mr. Mickelson.
Even a beginning as a smaller airport Station Manager, even ramp worker or gate agent (at UPS, except for the pilots, most have worked their way up from loading packages), would create more insight into which staffing, equipment $upport is needed (many of us still doubt that good passenger service is the goal-airline seats seem to be just a perishable cash commodity in the eyes of the executives) , than what most of today's airline CEOs will ever acquire by the time their "golden parachutes" are opened.
