It is NOT the fault of the workers.
It is when the workers refuse to take a pay cut!
And yes, the management, and everybody else working for Qantas should take one if the pilots do.
There are times when the workers MUST take a pay cut in order for their company to survive. In IR history, this has been, sadly, not an infrequent occurrence.
So if less than 4% of an aircraft's operating costs (pilot wages) cannot be reduced there is no hope for future profitability eh fgd??
It is way more than 4% - see below.
Pilot salaries cost the airline something like a dollar per ticket. You could halve pilot salaries and it would make little bottom-line difference ...
Wishful thinking in the extreme!
I have been able to put my hand on some research into these figures. The source of the information used in the research is the Qantas Annual report from 2002-2003.
From this research:
Of the airline's total costs, "staff" made up 28% and "aircraft operating" made up 21%.
The staff component wasn't broken down any further but I would conservatively estimate the pilot salaries to be 25% of the total salaries cost. This would make the pilot salaries 33% of the aircraft's operating costs - way more than the 4% figure bandied about in these forums!
As for the statement that "pilot salaries cost the airline something like a dollar per ticket":
Applying this assumption to the above 2002/03 figures (and assuming an average ticket price of $250), we calculate that Qantas would have made 192 billion dollars of ticket revenue that year! Their total costs were 10.8 billion dollars (AUD), so this would suggest a profitability of 1,645%.
Profitability in excess of a thousand percent? Does that sound plausible?
The research also had this to say:
"Qantas' staff costs in the 2002-2003 year were 28% of its total expenses - the highest in the South-East Asian region.
By contrast, airlines such as Singapore Airlines and Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific are purely international, although they do have some short-haul international routes. In both cases, their labor costs are approx 21% of total costs - much lower than that for Qantas. A factor in the significantly lower staff costs for these airlines is the nature of long-haul operations which tend to be less labor intensive. In addition, both asian based airlines enjoy better productivity from their staff and employ leaner work practices."