Guvnor
Your point about passengers being treated as pawns is absolutely correct. Unfortunately, over the years the pilot group has done such a good job of telling the travelling public how great aviation is and projecting the image that pilots are on a par with Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers etc., that few members of the public have (and fair enough) ANY sympathy for us "poor" hourly paid employees.
What you fail to take in to consideration is the fact that in UAL's case, UAL sold tickets on flights that it KNEW it could not operate because the pilot group had been telling management for EIGHTEEN months that they weren't hiring enough pilots to work these flights. UAL management, in its arrogance, ignored these warnings and as a result the pax lost out and once again it's the greedy pilots' fault ( I don't write a letter of this for sympathy, I write it because it's the TRUTH). How could you expect to run an airline (or any business)properly if your published schedule is totally reliant on employees working mandatory overtime? As usual incompetent management runs to their friends in the press
and the Government ( they make HUGE political contibutions-wonder why ?) and make everyone but themselves out to be responsible for the debacle! If I ran a business like this I'd be accused of fraud!
Ok that's got me warmed up. Would you like the lesson on EAL now?
Ever heard of a guy named Francisco Lorenzo ?
This piece of work ran rings around the labor laws (with considerable skill I might add) and picked off the carcass of EAL to add to his considerable fortune. The pilots at EAL could have worked for $2.50 an hour and Lorenzo would have tried to reduce that to $2.49 etc. The staff at EAL ,many of whom saw their life's work ruined, were left with nothing except the prospect of starting over.
The low cost/low paid carriers Lorenzo started (helped I might add by fools who did not see the big picture) only made a select few VERY WEALTHY. Clue, it wasn't the "greedy" pilots.
Pan Am ,sadly, were victims of US de-regulation rather than any "greedy" group of pilots. In effect,for years Pan Am was happy to have the domestic carriers provide feed to their international operation. When the 'cuffs came off in 1978 and the Delta's, United's, American's etc were able to compete for routes with Pan Am as well, the passengers' were ALREADY on their aeroplanes so why hand them over to Pan Am ? Very weak domestic feed = bye,bye Pan Am.
You claim WHEN Delta (go boys and girls!) attain their new pay-rates that 70 % of the expenses will go to labor costs. Nonsense.
Simple math here, let's use a two hour (600 mile to be conservative) domestic flight for example. We'll say the aeroplane seats 89 passengers. The Captain makes $ 200/hr, I make $100/hr = $600 (We don't, these rates are inflated for the purpose of this example). Three flight attendants (highly underpaid!) add $150 for a crew total of $750. The aeroplane we fly costs $6400/hr to operate. This allows for every other employee who is "touched" by the flight and the gas, amortization, etc so right now our 2 hour flight has expenses of $12,800, plus $750 for the crew. NOTE, $600 for us is not even close to the percentages you claim.
The aeroplane has an average load factor of 70% so we'll say there are 6 folks in first class (@ $550 per seat) and 57 folks in coach (@ $350 per seat). First class contributes $3300, coach adds another $19950 for a total revenue of $23250. Just to be fair let's say there are 10 non-revs aboard filling up 10 more seats. The cost per seat mile to the airline is 9 cents/mile. So, as we said the 2 hour distance is 600 miles, these seats "cost" the company $540. $23250 less $540 is $22710.
I believe the above figures I've used for seats are reasonable averages at AA. I've used the F100 at AA.
As anyone can see, these are MONEY MAKING MACHINES ! This trip generated over $9000 profit. Now imagine that multiplied by over TWO THOUSAND departures per day! Then explain me why the company can't afford its pilots?
I suppose Bob Ayling is worth the money he was paid, eh? Now that MAY be worth complaining about!
Cheers,dd.