dallas dude - I have the DOT figures as published for each airline in the States. As a proportion of overall costs, salaries make up by far the greatest amount - anywhere between 30% and 50% of overall costs. If, as DALPA wants, those costs are increased by a further 40%, you'll have up to 70% of all costs attributable to employment.
And that's just (plane) crazy!
If I was to gaze into my crystal ball, I'd see hard times ahead for UAL and any carrier (such as DL and AA) that emulates their insane pay scales. I see major layoffs - and probably industrial action - which will devastate once fine carriers.
We've seen it this past summer at UA - and a couple of years back at your own employer, AA - where the damage caused by such action is both severe and long term. I'd hate to think how many tens of thousands of once loyal customers United has lost over the actions of its pilots (and intransigence of management, to be fair).
You're quite right about more bums on seats not necessarily making more money - I was responding to Fly4fud's posting when I said that.
AA, and its OneWorld partner BA, have (in my view correctly) opted to concentrate on the high yield market rather than simply playing a numbers game. This means that they will fly fewer pax - and have got themselves smaller aircraft as a result - but will charge higher fares to pax for a quality service.
That's fine as long as the pax are prepared to pay - but as we saw in the last recession, corporate travel budgets are one of the first areas to be cut. This leaves carriers - such as AA, UA and DL - with very high overheads (new aircraft, high salaries)in a very precarious situation.
Live it up for now, dd - but at the same time, think of the hundreds of (formerly highly paid) pilots who have never returned to the air after the bankruptcies of carriers such as EA and PA.