RRamjet and None attempted to enlighten some apparently educated people who still don't quite grasp some simple concepts.
Southwest pilots are about the highest-paid 737 pilots in the world. How are they low cost?
Southwest is one of the most heavily-unionized airlines in the world, therefore, to repeat the mindless mantra echoed by the idiot writers in our business and general media, unions are the problem? This makes no sense, not at all.....
Could Productivity be the key? For the hundredth time on Pprune, Southwest created their routes on a classic, linear structure: city to city to city...They are not Hub-Slaves. Hubs were never designed for high productivity-but they were supported by very high business ticket fare, and hubd also feed traffic to Euro and Pacific routes. Is that now clear? Now JetBlue and Airtran (formerly ValueJet) use hubs, but some of the initial ValueJet captains were Eastern scabs, and their monthly pay was less than that of many delivery truck drivers, plus, no sick leave, vacation or retirement pay. Hard to believe, isn't it? At a party in an Atlanta suburb, a major airline pilot overheard one of their ValueJet mgmt. guys bragging about how much they were, eh...shafting... their pilots (pardon the indelicate language, ladies). Scabs don't care how you pay or treat them. A former Captain there, who joined after leaving the USAF, calls Valuejet "Ghettojet". I can put you in contact with him.
At a traditional, classic hub-and-spoke airline, some crew flying narrowbody jets fly on many typical days through a 7-10 hour duty period. With many short legs connected to hubs, the block time for a day with only 3 legs might = about 4.5-5.5 hours. This is your pay for that day.
But here is the catch: although upper mgmt. constantly whines and moans about needing more productivity, their Trip Planning Staff give us some days (others are grueling: working 12-13 hours to fly block/pay credit worth maybe 6-8 hours, then you are quite tired, even in good weather: and we have no automation
Our minimum layover time is only 10 hours and 15 minutes-this includes post flight, preflight and time to and from the hotel after an exhausting day, maybe with a pay credit equal to 7.5 hours, flying 5-7 legs...) that only have 3 legs to fly, and block time may be only about 4.5 hours. The PILOTS did NOT design our own trips-these are created by Flt Ops Trip Planning people, whatever their titles, using computers which should rival capabilities of those on Star Trek, the Next Generation! These trips are designed for the lowest operating cost-but how do they QUANTIFTY productivity, and input this factor to the HAL 9000 computer?
If you still don't believe this and have the nerve to e-mail me, I'll send you exact data from various trip pairings which will illustrate how many legs and long consecutive duty periods (without scheduled rest anywhere, anytime) are needed just for our productivity to exceed 6 hours pay in 1 day. Remember the mindless mantra: "unions' high costs are the problem...".
Why would our pilot union negotiators want narrowbody pilots, even when many crews are on time in good weather, sitting around between 2 and 4 hours in a hub, at least once each day? If we were allowed to work more block hours per day, we could have an extra day or two off per month, and some more junior (seniority) pilots might also be able to attend birthdays and Christmas with younger children. by contrast, many widebody pilots, who fly to Asia, sometimes have long strings of days off-but how long do their planes stay in their hour on most flights? Their trips rarely have trip or duty "rig" built in-they don't need them. Often, narrowbody A-319/320 and 757 pilots have no rig on many days-their payload/ range is much longer.
Our 4 hour 15 minute minimum pay, per day, was created to give company trip-planning staff the INCENTIVE to make us productive. Here is a secret: company negotiators always RESIST having a minimum daily pay guarantee of up to 5 hours, or more! But they claim that they want us to fly more block hours per day... But there is no proof. Is the contradiction here glaring? Have you a pair of cheap 'wayfarer' sunglasses with you? Remember the mindless mantra which the public consumes: "high union costs are the problem...".
This is why union negotiators (when not in Chapter 11) are allowed to build into their contracts trip and duty "rig" ratios. Without this pay INCENTIVE, the airlines would allow very sloppy scheduling and might allow narrowbody flightcrews to work only 2 medium or short legs per day-maybe more deadheads (riding in a passenger seat to re-position: very wasteful). We don't want to waste our time in a hub. Do you, when you can't work, but would like to? We can't fly on a laptop, at least not fly people or cargo. For airlines in Chapter 11, bankruptcy judges, with n prior knowledge of how flightcrew productivity is created, might throw out these rigs (I actually don't know), so despite a company's alleged demand for productivity, they try to tell the judge that rigs and minimum (i.e. 4.25 hours per day) are expensive for them! Don't forget the mindless mantra which the public (even many ignorant Ppruners) consume, on a daily basis: "high union costs are the problem...". Pardon this long length.
