The transformation of the professional pilot from a goggled occupant of an open cockpit into an aristocrat of Labor whose work actions would be derided as "Cadillac Strikes" in the press did not happen accidentally nor was it the work of the Invisible Hand of the market. From the earliest days of ALPA under the tutelage of Captain Dave Behncke, pilots, who are by nature very individualistic, were cobbled together into a working, viable guild with self respect. Benefitting from a prescience that sometimes even eluded the airline builders of the past, such as the legendary Eddie Rickenbacker of Eastern or Juan Trippe of Pan American, Behncke devised pay scales that were tied to aircraft size and speed. While management may not have been able to look forward to days when airliners where bigger and faster than the DC-3, Behncke could. When technology allowed these planes to come on line, pilot pay went up automatically just as surely as profits; much to the chagrin of management. An early assault on pilot wages came in the form of the so-called Age 60 rule. Several airlines had tried and failed to impose mandatory retirement ages on their pilots outside of negotiations as the larger and faster aircraft were being delivered. The pioneer era pilots were approaching 60, and there was a concern that their longevity coupled to higher pay rates would cut into profits as would the longer times anticipated for training them. After the Korean War, airlines were flooded with applications from pilots who had jet experience and would work for less. No data ever gathered was able to prove that older pilots were less safe than younger pilots, but the law was rammed through because American Airlines president and founder C.R. Smith’s friend former Army Air Corps Lt. Gen. Elwood “Pete” Quesada had recently been named the first administrator of the newly created FAA by his former military commander, President Dwight D. Eisenhower. For more information on how this fraud was perpetrated go to:
Young pilots riskier than the over-60s who are turned away | Center for Public Integrity or
Age 60 Rule History Frameset.
As an interesting side note, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame University, was a proponent of mandatory early retirement and wrote letter to the administrator who, in a rare moment of candor, admitted that there was no medical evidence to support his decision. After passage of the mandatory retirement bill, the forcibly retired pilot could then be employed at a commuter airline and work in that more physiologically demanding environment but the compensation was significantly less.
Even after saddling themselves with multiple alimony payments, older pilots remain incapable of seeing how their grief resulted from living a lie as the poster boys for the Sexual Revolution. The envy of arab shiekhs with a more modest harems, these well-healed and fit flyboys enjoyed a desirable ratio with attractive, young unmarried women who ran around in the back of the plane. The younger generation is now convinced it missed out on something good by being born too late. The Playboy-Pilot era is best exemplified in by the movie The Pilot starring Cliff Robertson, a film which, according to one pilot blogger “has realistic DC8 flying/checklists (Cliff Robertson got typed for the film). It has booze (lots), a mistress on the opposite coast (he bids transcons for this reason), great late ‘70s cut uniforms/hairstyles with stewardesses' skirts high cut enough to exonerate all of us for choosing this NOW **** profession.”
As a member of what is already the most psychologically analyzed profession what does this pilot-blogger think of all the gay men who have now squeezed those young girls out of the profession and the sensitivity training he must now submit to? It’s doubtful that he perceives it as just the next phase in the use of sexual liberation as a means of control.
How, you ask, does business benefit from this distraction? Consider the fact that airlines were among the first to make contraceptives part of their benefits packages. While it makes business sense for an airline to open up a crew base in some far flung place, isn’t it easier to order the relocation of a deracinated pilot with a broken or non-existent marriage and no kids? And if that makes sense in terms of driving down wages and increasing control, then wouldn’t the ideal employee then be a military trained homosexual?
It is true that the flight deck had been, with few exceptions, the preserve of the white male. Relying on the military pipeline would almost assure that. Prior to the ‘60s I don’t think people gave it much thought since they probably didn’t identify themselves in those terms but rather along regional or ethnic lines. But the fact remains: the two biggest groups making up the pilot population were southern whites and ethnic Catholics. It would take affirmative action to unite them in an ugly way, so that now you can ask any “white” airline pilot what UNITED stands for and he’ll come back with: Unqualified Niggers in Training, Expect Delays.” Of course, their reclassification as “whites” was abetted by the flight to the suburbs made easier by the fact that they seldom commuted daily to work and almost never at rush hour.
Ethnic Catholics have traditionally been over represented in the transportation industry and had growing political clout. Combined with the baby boom, the fact that their presence in the military was out of proportion to the general population assured the growth of this group in the pilot profession. I contend that they could have more easily assimilated Hispanics and blacks naturally. Instead they were forced to accept that they along with other “whites” had a debt to pay for past injustices beyond their control.
The surge in members of the fairer sex on the flight deck was first brought about by the courts but later eagerly promoted by the human resource departments. Books can be written on the short term costs to airlines of these policies, and stories of incompetence abound whenever pilots gather, but most were and still are quite capable of performing their job.
Large airlines have already demonstrated that they have, due to the long upgrade times, the capacity to hire and train pilots with very little experience such as the tactical military pilot who typically flies one-tenth as much in a year as a regional pilot. Unlike police departments and firehouses that went through similar social engineering experiences, women never put any one in this field in danger because of their lack of upper-body strength. As senior captains internalized the commands of their oppressors, they became intimidated by the possibility of being charged with sexual harassment. Comics have averred that it is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant, but perhaps the larger social consequence of sexual favoritism has been that it is easier for a daughter to follow in her father’s footsteps than a son. All of these things had the effect of weakening the cohesiveness of the pilot group and decreasing the value of its labor through an increase in the size of the workforce.
The period following deregulation saw the smashing of unions by corporate raiders such as Frank Lorenzo and the establishment of non-union “alter ego” companies that took business away from unionized carriers with the same owners. Like the thugs who steal cars, Lorenzo found that airlines were sometimes worth more for their parts than as a whole.
Exacerbating the divisive effect which cheaper labor working at nonunion airlines had on the industry, the individualistic traits of pilots allowed management to play groups off against one another. In 1982, two-tiered pay scales were devised "to protect the pay of senior pilots" when in fact they were intended to give unequal pay for equal work and prevent new hires under the infamous "B-scale" from ever seeing compensations rates like their colleagues on a different track. The deviousness of the “B-scale” was that it played to myopia and greed of the pilots who voted for it by pitting pilots currently working against those who weren’t even hired. [FTL2]
Some pilot groups were sold the notion that pay scales should be governed by longevity and not by equipment flown. Companies would save money on cross training crews to different fleets and pilots could stay in their preferred aircraft and forego jeopardizing their careers by not having to be trained and checked on new aircraft types every few years in order to get a raise. Such pyramidal pay structures, while initially appealing to junior pilots who can't see themselves ever having the seniority to bid the largest equipment, never give the best pay to all crews. In fact, with a carrot at the apogee, they only induce pilots at the bottom to perform the same tasks for less in anticipation of a move, with time, to the top. When the pyramid gets too top heavy, management cries for concessions.
Then came the Regionals.
Whether an individual Regional Airline existed in some form before the 1980s is irrelevant because even most major airlines in the early years would be characterized by regional activities by the standards of today’s modern intercontinental jets. When I used the term “regional” I’m referring to the subcontractors which are not really airlines in the classical sense. Unlike the airlines which share their paint schemes, regionals are not able to increase market share through advertising, adding routes and destinations, increasing the number of fights or tweaking fares. So-called regional airlines agree to carry the passengers of a mainline carrier for a set price, and the only way they are able to increase their profit margins is through the streamlining of the