Some really interesting posts on here, a situation not dissimilar to the present BA debacle in terms of the position some employee groups are taking. I wonder if the result wil be the same?
First I’d like to say that the pilots are a very important element to the airline industry. The pilots do a wonderful job and they have flown millions of passengers to their destinations over the years. They have a hard job and they deserve to get paid well for the hard work they do. Pilots are not the only ones that do hard work in the airline industry. Remember the hard work that the flight attendants, reservation agents and all other workers do. Everyone should simply feel good that they have a job and not worry about what kind of plane they fly and if they fly coast to coast or to Europe. The pilots need to think of Delta as their family and join together rather than to be selfish and money, power hungry. Delta once printed in a newspaper article how much better they were than AirTran Airlines. Their quote was on a given day a Delta business traveler would be at the gate in a suit and the AirTran passenger was in jeans. Those blue jean flyers are keeping AirTran in business. That type of attitude is the one that is keeping Delta from merging. Let the pilots keep the mergers from happening and the pilots may be out of work driving around a car rather than a plane.
Comment by Mark Krammer MD - April 8, 2008 at 5:42 pm
and:
So, pilots should be paid what they “deserve”? Did you make sure those strawberries you ate were picked by someone who was paid what they deserved? Are the shoes you’re wearing made by someone paid what they deserved? Was your lawn mowed by someone paid what they deserved?
BEWARE: When someone starts arguing they DESERVE to be paid more, you can be sure what they really mean is MORE THAN THE MARKET WOULD PAY. That’s why pilots love to whine about management but won’t pool their money to actually buy and run an airline (and BECOME management) — they know that being a business owner is incompatible with also being an employee who seeks to extort above market wages from that business.
Comment by Groucho - April 8, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Says it better than I could - I think the BA pilots are "living in interesting times!"
