Ignition, I stand corrected, but Southwest's pilots union is not part of the national union, hence their pilots work slightly longer hours, are more productive, so they do deserve to be the best paid 37 pilots if that's what u say! Jet blue has no union for their pilots and their pilots get paid just fine, and I doubt they will be wanting to join the national pilots union seeing how the legends are falling on their faces and the low costs are being paid fish bait. Ur hub to hub and city to city model explanation is not the main reason why these airlines are having problems, it's cost, costs, costs and productivity. U can't control fuel costs (unless u pre-bought it),,,, u can control productivity and labor costs;;but guess who has the big say on whether u can or not,,,,?The very distinguished national Airline Pilots Association-_-_ for member airlines that is., I hope u can answer why,, SW Pilots must be so smart to stay away from it. Don't forget that during the early years, the current legends, now having all these problems worked so deparately to try and snuff out SW, Herb Kelleher had his employees giving 110 percent to keep those birds flying, and they continue to date.
I worked for cessna as a flight line mechanic and was part of the IAM union, which is a humongous union. I hated every part of it, a bunch of F*%kN morons run that organization. They encourage laziness, "take ur time doing something for job protection", blah blah, blah...and want the company to hire more than the necessary hands because they belive that creates strenght in numbers. Unions don't mean anything in the long term if u have idiots at the helm. After 9-11, when the airline manufactures started shelving employees, I neva saw one union leader come down to the hangers...Quite simply put, the unions run a Ceaseresque modus operandis, make ur followers happy, and u still have a job and power, but what about 2morrow?
Because of the National pilots union, pilots lose senioirty when they move to another airline that's part of the union, that means, u are enslaved to their outdated and dubious dinosaur statutes or whatever they are. One solution to this problem is encouraging pilots of the national union airlines to grow balls, detach, and look for real investors to hear their newly formed independent unions at their own airlines.
The day pilots will wake up and realize that they cannot control the price of fuel, cannot control stupid stuff like 9-11 happening, but they can control one variable in this equation, their pay and working hours---so far, their shackles to this Goliath Union means, pilots are in so little control of anything,,,,. It's only made worse because airwaiters, mechanics, trolley pushers, shoe shiners blah blah blah...at these airlines all have unions, ...Because of Frank Lorenzo and how he busted their a@@es, the unions thought becoming a megaladon would ensure no lorenzo ever screwed them again, and they were right!!
, Mr. Lorenzo where ever he is, is sitting in his cabin laughing himself to sleep.
