Our industry is full of ironic situations. Here are some related factors.
For example, let's say that your company (as with a US airline yesterday) decides to initiate a discount for up to 40% on leisure fares, as if this decision were forced upon them. They also just announced, on almost the same day, that they have about 1400 excess flight attendants.
They will then plead to the media and the employees (knowing that Wall Street is always listening), by early winter, about the profit-draining "heavy industry discounting", and use this as rational to lay off even more employees, whether pilots or others.
This massive surplus of trained, current pilots on the street automatically give your employer many more "hostages on the street", and more leverage, when they decide to suggest changes to contracts. Check on former American CEO Bob Crandall's strategy in the early 80's, in order to expedite the recall of furloughed pilots and expand the airline. It looks as if Mr. Carty was well-groomed as Crandall's apprentice.
Crandall and his senior pilot toadies, who are all now retired-their final average earnings were based partly upon their "A scale" salaries-introduced the very first pilot "B scale" (substandard pay for up to 20 years) to the industry. Talk about selling the profession down the river.
At US airline (Delta connection) Comair, the pay for training concept was introduced by Flight Safety International, and this allowed a massive expansion in regional jet flying, aided to a large extent by language in mainline Delta's pilot contract, among the weakest scope language ever seen in a US major airline contract (according to "Aviation Week & ST" years ago, about 20% of Delta's pilots were not ALPA members...) . It was a major precedent in the US industry-mgmt thought "Hey, these young kids are perfect suckers, they pay the equivalent of what a 737 or DC-9 type rating costs, and for a tentative FO turboprop job! What a deal for us...!" This reportedly reduced the need for narrowbody jet pilots at Delta. Along with the fact that regional jet FOs work at about US minimum wage and US labor judges allow such discriminatory low wages (which are not based on ALPA formula precedents, which apply in mainline contracts during "mgmt. pattern bargaining").
The explosive growth of regional jets here in the US reduced the need for pilots at the mainline carriers, even without the current slump, and will continue to reduce the need in the future. Statistically, as regionals take over many more routes of the mainline carriers, the major partners will have less need for replacement pilots, whether they come from the regionals, corporate, military backgrounds, or a combination. Much of this is due to Comair's/Delta's precedent. Very disappointing long-term results for "pay for training", after "jumpstarting a career" to the tune of US $10-12,000+. Some even bought a very expensive DC-9 type rating, in order to work at Valuejet for about $2,000/month, with no sick leave, vacation or retirement pay! An FO here, formerly a fighter pilot, then Valuejet Captain, only refers to them as "Ghetto-jet", at least when flying with me (poor guy...).
That Flight Safety Int'l regional simulator training was about the same price as a US jet type-rating, but these pilots who trained to be FOs, were never allowed to have the type rating! This money might have bought a 737 type for a job with Southwest. What a juicy deal between Flight Safety and Comair, which both made tons of money from the "buy a job" concept in the early 90's.
Last edited by Ignition Override; 5th Oct 2002 at 04:54.