Dear raas767 and Cisco, (I see your new job delivers as much time off as the old...don't you have Grandchildren?)
The seniority system is absurd.
The only viable determinant of pay and conditions is productivity. This is underscored by the one vital point that constantly seems to escape your attention. AN AIRLINE NEEDS TO BE PROFITABLE.
For those bewildered souls who still maintain that pilot's pay is a negligible part of overall operating costs to an airline, take American Airlines as a moderate example.
Q1 this year, labour costs up US$129m. This corresponds to 61% of the profit made in Q1 the preceding year, and a determining factor behind AA's plumet into loss this year....and that was BEFORE 911!
I believe the route cause of the problem is UAL and its ridiculous increases in pilots pay. A short term expedient engineered by Jim Goodwin that has cost him his job, and made all the greedy pilots of Star Alliance sit up and expect the same.
When UAL is now haemoraging US$20 million every single day, how do we visionary professional pilots respond? ASAP-Association of Star Alliance Pilots. Their committed goal? Raising every alliance cockpit organisation to the same lunatic level, and have even set about comparing notes on pay and conditions and negotiating tactics, in this, the worst operating climate in the history of the aviation industry.
Moreover, every time we cockpit primadonas snarl that we're overworked and underpaid, and yet cling limpet-like to obstructionist seniority lists, all of our fellow airport employees, the fuelers, the baggage handlers, the check-in staff, start to feel exploited and become surly. And, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, surly is NOT GOOD in a service industry!
Have a look at the particularly unedifying BA layoff thread and see how the world's favourite airline STILL views its seniorty list as a way for senior captains to score 3 or 4 high revenue flights per month, and woe-betide you if you stand in the way of that cosy little earner.
If you want to earn megabuks chaps, THEN YOU SHOULD BLOODY WELL WORK FOR THEM. Seniority is a stick to beat airlines and junior colleagues with, and of ensuring restrictive and protectionist trade practices endure ad nauseum....nothing more: nothing less.
SENIORITY LISTS MUST GO.
And so, the contagion of appalling American labour relations has spread accross the globe and infected, among others, Lufthansa, Cathay, Iberia, (don't get me started on Sabena) just at a time when we are fighting for our very survival. Air Transport is as vital to most economies as the railway was a century ago...its time for us to display the leadership expected of such an important profession.
Sure its reasonable to expect an excellent package in return for productivity....whats wrong with a fair day's pay for a fair day's work? Its decent and honest and will, in a post-seniority world, reflect our special status in terms of training, risks to tenure from loss of licence, professionalism(!), responsibility, and so on. The best thing of all, is that it will provide for a truly free market within our pilot corps whereby those prepared to contribute most robustly to the profit of those who employ us, will reap the biggest rewards. No reward, no pilots, because we will all be elsewhere earning a ****load of dosh.
I, like the rest of the reasonable world, realise exactly why you spit your dummies with such blue-faced hystrionics, raas767, Cisco, Hooking, MIKEYBOY, Bu..ship, and the rest. For the first time in a long time, your non-sensical, offensive, padded and protected Fiefdoms are under threat, and its about bloody time.
Fellow airline pilot:
We face a crossroads in our prefessional lives. With airlines teetering on the brink, its time to revisit what we can reasonably expect from our careers. With electonics engineers steering us rapidly toward the day where we can easily be replaced by a systems manager and his pet dog, don't you think its time to do away with failed, immoral, Marxist, anti-competitive, obstructionist nonsense like unions and seniority lists?
Better decide soon, or when you DO finally know the joy of Grandchildren, Cisco, you'll pass the time recounting the halcyon days when airliners actually HAD pilots siting at the very front of them.
The clock's ticking folks!
[ 02 November 2001: Message edited by: YakYak ]
[ 02 November 2001: Message edited by: YakYak ]