Poitiers,
Re FOs salaries vs CPT salaries : yes some long haul FOs do make more money than some Short/medium haul CPTs. Now that can be easily explained. If a long haul FO works 85 hours a month of which 70% account for night time flying, I'm not shocked (s)he's going to make more money than a Short haul CPT flying 70 hours, 90% of which are day time. Get the two on the same pattern (i.e. same number of hours and same proportions day/night), the CPTs will make more than the FOs.
I totally agree we should adapt several rules to reality. Once again, I do believe we should relieve the company from some part of the burden as we do bear some part of that burden.
Fair enough.
Now the way things are displayed at the moment is we, flight deck and CCs, are the one cause of the evil in this airline which is so completely untrue !!!
Not only is this unfair but it is counterproductive. It prevents the airline from taking the right path towards perennial and permanent recovery by distracting management away from THE real comparative DISadvantage : overheads.
Overheads are killing us. Overheads are not necessarily staff load. Not only, rather. That very first line on the income statement keeps us firmly anchored to the shore ground, whatever the amount of efforts we deliver towards cheaper operating staff. This is what "killed" Alcatel Lucent, for instance. And this is what low cost airlines and Delta Airlines don't have, or so minor it is not relevant.
And raiding crew T&Cs is a nice and comfy demeanor that keeps management in some sort of a dream. Very satisfying as well, as diminishing pilots' clout must be a wet dream for any top manager at Air France and any airline.
Yet, as our previous CEO underlined, we could save anywhere between 700 million and 1 billion euros just by transferring this load to Amsterdam and melting it into one single, centralized system working more efficiently and avoiding the heavy French social taxes. Why don't we do it ? This is what so many merging companies are seeking and achieving. Yet Air France won't move a single inch on this chapter. Ridiculous !!!