this is the problem right here! and untill this changes, nothing else will.

What's everyone gripping about?
This is happening in every other western country and now oz, only it's about 3 years late. Southwest started the fare war in the US, Easyjet and Ryan in Europe, JetsGo in Canada and now VirginBlue in Australia. Yeah conditions have gone down the gurgler but I don't think anyone is flying for 19K like they are here in the US.
Don't worry, it's gonna get a lot worse.

Just like to throw this into the mix.
Doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. all have the potential to earn big $$$$ with extra study and a bit of hard yakka the earning potential is almost endless ie; lawyer to judge.

The figures that have been bandied around for interns, first year lawyers etc should not be compared to the pay of an airline pilot which is pretty well as far as we can go, it is more comparable to a GA pilot who, if he is real lucky, might get 40k a year for living in the middle of nowhere.

As airline pilots, we are ( arguably ) at the pinnacle of our profession, the only way up is into management.
So those of you who compare us to lawyers, doctors etc, compare our income to those that are at the top of their profession, I think you'll find it's not quite as favourable as you would like to think

From the award.......
 

Captain-Fokker 28/CRJ-50 $89715

First Officer-Fokker 28/CRJ-50 $57518

Captain-BAe-146 / Fokker- 100 / Boeing- 717 $97600

First Officer-BAe-146 / Fokker- 100 / Boeing- 717 $62488

Captain-Boeing 737 / Boeing 727 $102600

First Officer-Boeing 737 / Boeing 727 $65600



Base salaries only.

Maybe the award is wrong ?

The award figures are way out of date
 

Only speaking of which I know.

Bae 146 Capt $120,000
Bae146 F/O appox $70,000

Bulletin February 8, 2005 Geoff Dixon talking about Jetstar
Why are the Pilots always singled out?

Because they are always the ones who will gladly do anything to secure someone else's job.

They have always been, and will continue to be, their own worst enemies.

Those of you with any sense of intellect had better start looking for other skills and qualifications, because this job won't be worth having in a few years. Then when the lower gene pool takes over, and things start to go wrong, maybe the salaries will rise. Then again, they do build aeroplanes pretty crash proof these days, don't they?

This topic of wages versus study versus responsibility versus lawyers versus doctors has been thrashed to death so many times that it's just not worth worrying about anymore. Time to move on isn't it?

But for my two cents - $230,000 a year is simply way too much to pay some slob to poke about Australia in the front of a jet. The job just isn't worth that sort of money. Regardless of how many "split second live saving" decisions that they think they make each year. This is all fantasy stuff, too many war comics in the flight bag methinks.

Besides, if they were making that many life saving decisons then they should be sacked for getting themselves into that situation anyway.

Secondly, argue as you do about the difference between $100 grand and $180 grand a year but the fact is that most of you wouldn't know what to do with that sort of money even if you were earning it so stop getting all heated about it.



Gin.

Airline reject are we GJ ?:confused:

GJ

It is not all about the decisions that these pilots have to make, I am sure this sort of money takes to account a compensatory factor of being away from home alot. Sure these people make the decision to be airline pilots, but surely they need to be compensated properly considering not only their skill, hard work, but the impact it has on their private lives. They miss a fair bit of their kids growing up.

I think you have to realise the way the labour system works in capitalism. People pay the LOWEST amount they need to , to get the numbers of workers they require to make maximum profit.

If companies are short on pilots , they have to pay more -- up until the cost means that hiring another pilot doesn't help profit.

I don't think it is fair for people to throw mud at people for accepting less in pay&conditions (in substitute for losing their job). Basically what people are saying is "You take a hit for the team, and lose your job so that my pay won't decline".

Everyone has to make a living . If you can't accept the pay , don't accept it and find another job. It doesn't matter what you think you should be getting paid , unfortunately it only matters what people are going to pay you. Just look at the difference in pay between someone working on a cure for cancer, and someone who plays golf professionally.

Nothing will ever change. A stronger union may get hirer wages, but the net result would be fewer pilots.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love more money -- but ...

That's just the way it is. :(

Jeez............here we go again.....Ginjockey, apart from showing your mentality level...(about on par with a rock)..in the choice of nickname, I have to take my hat off to your windup attempt, well done my lad!!!
The choice is simple...continue as is and earn what an interstate truck driver earns...or....unionise in a cohesive fashion and bring the airline industry to its knees. Until that happens, condiitons will go from bad to worse.
The rest of this subject has been done to death......Woomera, please give this almost dead horse a final belt!!!!!!

Yeah yeah attack ginjockey over his abstact online name and the fact he has an opinion different to yours. Attack him because his opinion goes against the common flow of cry baby muck that some of you "underpaid" sooks spew out. All done with....? Great.

What I'm saying to you is that if our particular skills were worth $250K a year to a company we would be getting it. They are not!

Personally, I make under 90 grand a year and I am pretty happy with that. Paying the mortgage, half decent car, a few toys, enough for a night out when it suits me. I don't need to make $300 grand a year to have a choice life so I don't dwell on the fact that someone is getting it somewhere else. Good on 'em, get a good accountant is my only advice.
I'm bloody happy with what I can do with my present cash and I'm not going to die in a ditch bleating for another fifty grand a year that I can happily live without.

If you blokes all NEED to make $200K a year then your problems go way beyond simple employment conditions.

I get paid fairly for what I am expected to produce, it's not hard work and most importantly...... I ENJOY IT.

I tell you what. If you feel so strongly about it then back yourself, walk in, ask for a payrise and put your indefensible case to the boss. Let me know how you go with it.

Ah! Unity?
 

Maybe this should have been said here?

Perhaps a few people should review. refresh & learn the history of pilot/ management relationships starting back to the 1930s. (not just here, read the excellent books & articles from ALPA)

And don't forget to pause for a thorough reading of Eastern Airlines, Continental, Pan Am, TWA, etc. with reference to the management practices taught in the `Frank Lorenzo School of Airline Management' where Strong & Dixon graduated with distinction. (Ansett management after Abeles failed miserably except those who went to QF)(Did I here someone mention an aged small paddock?)

Those who call for a strong, unified union need a monumental reality check as a union is only as stong as its memebers and their unity.

A union with weak members, a union without a united sense of direction, a union which within it has members who have demonstrated they care liitlle for their fellow man forming a cancer within, is doomed to failure.

Management recognising and understanding these weaknesses can, and will, exploit them ruthlessly.

It is little use whinging and whining about it if you are not prepared to pay.

Losers whine about the past and what could be, winners go home and fcuk the Prom Queen!

Hi Ginjocky!!

I like your post. I think you should post more often. When I read it, I realize that that you are dumber than me. This realization fills me with joy as it is further proof that I posess an intellect that places me in the top 3% of the world's population and that you are somewhere down below. It further enhances my ego that I disagree with you.

Let me put this succinctly, so that even you can understand; Your intellectual capacity is that of a slightly trained simian who has mastered the use of a keyboard, nothing more.

Because you have made it so crystal clear that you have failed to comprehend the issue, a B747-400 Captain sits on about $1,000,000,000 of liability, assuming a total hull loss with all lives on board. If you do not a pay a salary that is commensurate with the responsibility, then you will get a dummy who might f$#$%^ up at the moment of truth and then cost the community really big, BIG bucks. Smart people will cost money.

You are happy on less than $90, 000. PA.

Need I say more?



:ok:

A good post, Ralph, but I doubt that he will have understood it.:p

And it seems that Dark Knight is WK, the DCP of Qantas in disguise. Out for some more tyranny in management are we DK?

It might be an idea to take on and change Federal legislation first. Changes made there had far more effect in significantly reducing the bargaining power of unions. Ho hum...

ash_d at the risk of getting bagged for asking a really stoopid question - Do shipping companies have simulators or is it all hands-on?

DK = WK you reckon Schnauzer?

You may be right. He does seem to possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of union business.

And he should know!

schnauzer missed the point completely.

History shows Qantas management has been screwing their staff for ages having one of the worst industrial relations records of any airline.

There has only been one occasion, to my recollection, where the QF pilots had the intestinal fortitude to take any serious action to further & protect their profession.

Pilots in this country once had a professional union which was as strong as the members within it and did very, very well protecting and furthering pilots salary & conditiions; a union is only as strong as its members and unity of those members.

The QF pilots were first to leave for their own perceived selfish reasons & when the whatsit really hit the fan sat by on the sidelines blinded by the observations`it will not happen to us.'

And where is the industry now?

QF salaries & conditions always under serious attack; Aust airlines - lower pay & conditions, Jet* - we will fly for less and on QF mainland routes (would never happen?); and now, wherever the 717 is going we will fly it for less again? For the Ansett integration squabbles insert any airline within the QF group. One only has to read PPRune to observe tha answers.

I have no truck with airline management particularly QF; I ws only stating the bleeding obvious, airline management have the pilots measure, know the weaknesses within particularly the cancer within they created. They have the big stick and are using it very, very successfully.

It is of little use calling for a strong union if you are not prepared to stand up and be counted as one.

Reading the history mentioned illustrates pilots overall have failed to learn the lessons of the past.

The same old arguments about what a Dr. lawyer, tinker, taylor, sailor, crane, train or bus driver are worth have all been done to death before, prove nothing except detracting people from the main point to irrelevant drivel.

You are worth what you and your profession think you are worth and what you are prepred to stand up for and negotiate.

QF management obviously thingk you are worth peanuts and works assiduously towards reluctantly paying you this.

If you think you are worth more, then as ONE you have to stand up, stay standing up and say this is what you WILL pay us for our services! No IFS, no Buts!

Until such time as this happens most of what I am reading is whining which is distracting me from fcuking the prom queen.

DK

PS>> apologies to the guys from Braniff where, if memory serves me correctly, this is where modern airline management, pilot relationships all started. (was Braniff or Continental Lorenzo's originating port?)

Ralph, Here's your news flash......

*** If our piloting skills WERE as valuable as you imagine, we WOULD be getting paid accordingly. ****

Maybe cut back on the old bong a bit.

And what's with all the insults anyway?? Rushing in making personal attacks over a difference of opinion. Not an attractive quality. Try and keep it sensible or just sit quietly while the grown- ups talk OK.

Lodown,

Its a good question. Complicated answer though. In training levels there is some sim work but its real basic stuff. There are no real "off the showroom floor" ships so its hard to come up with generic models for sims which would 'feel' anything like the real thing but its an ongoing debate.
Marine Pilots (the folks who pilot ships in and out of most ports / canals etc) use sims to practice tight / slow manouvers and emergency recovery manouvers for thier particular local conditions.
Sims are used to test a port or a confined area if there are intentions to push the margins, eg: to find out if 'x' size / type vessel can safely navigate at or thru 'x' location. We would ask a training org to write a sim for the port in question, then introduce the vessel characteristics we need and when its all ready, we'll play with it using different weather / sea conditions to see what works and what doesn't so we can whip up an SOP or use it to convince authourities to let us give it a bash.
Of course, sims are also used to test ship designs and mods.

But as far as jo bloggs the deck officer goes, not much sim time compared to aviation.

DK, much of what you state may be true, but it sure as hell hurts!:ouch: :ouch: :ouch:

I'm convinced now that you aren't WK though. He wouldn't stand a chance in hell of going anywhere near the prom queen!:} :p :ok:

Can't argue with that DK. All very sad but true.

Unions
 

I don't know why people think straying from the union line is selfish. A union is just a collective of selfish people. Unions do nothing in the modern era except harm the economy.
The sooner the practice of "compulsory unionism" is totally ended the better we all will be.

A union asking for more wages only prevents other people getting jobs in the same industry. :eek:

Everyone complains if a company like the old Telecom has a monopoly and prices it's products accordingly -- Why does no-one have a problem with a union having a monopoly on labour and pricing wages monopolistically.

:yuk: Unions..

After 5 pages of this drivel, I still haven't found anyone who can tell us what exactly were the concessions that NJS pilots had to make.

If there were any.

Okay kiddies back to the bitching and whinging.

I wonder who is paying for the A380 endorsement? :confused:

Sleuth,

If we took your advice then QF would in all probability announce that they were unable to finalise terms with NJS and that Jetstar was now the preferred tendered, subject to the successful negotiation of operating conditions.

Besides, there was no pressure from the company.

We are all at the cross roads of where our profession is heading! Anyone with any small amount of intuition, forsight or business accumen can clearly see that unless some of the serious issues that will effect the future of our careers are tackeled now, and with a united force (let the barage of quotes begin, " It's been tried before and failed, look at 89", " Everyones looking out for themselves", " Lets compare surgins, lawyers etc etc") its time we forgot all this crap and looked inwards towards each other and ourselves and really grew some backbone and gained some sence of pride in ourselves and each other.

Lets not just sit hear and complain about what our management are trying to do to our profession and let it happen right in front of our eyes, lets be pro-active instead of being just a reactionary group of professionals, what should be happening when one group of pilots from company XYZ are about to BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again), pilots from other companies should forget all their narrow minded self serving commitments and stand together as a group of professionals willing to uphold the very institutions and ethics of professionalism we display everyday online in the cockpit.

History has proven that the current form of representation we have is not working. Our representatives in my small and meaningless opinion are very similar to all of us who are only there to serve their best interests (and preserve their B727 check Captains pay etc etc.) at the expence of our conditions and professionalism. Its also been proven that our comments, arguments, suggestions seem to always pass unheeded, especially when EBA negotiations are underway. And why may you all ask does this happen time and time again, its because firstly we let this happen, secondly our best interests are not acted upon, and thirdly the ties between our representatives and our managements is too cosy for our liking.

You may all ask the question how do we rectify this problem?

Firstly we gain some moral fibre and sence of pride in ourseleves and gain some upper hand in stopping our management from down grading, or should I say down playing our professionalism, (I bet if GD or BG or the general public were sitting in seat A or B, and the number 1 engine is on fire, would they be thinking about shareholders expectations, yields, squeezing the last possible cent out of every possible department, of course not, they would be thinking I hope the people at the pointy end dont f#%^ this up).

I pose the question of starting a unified group of the whole collective pilot body in this country that uses independant, highly qualified industrial/law experts that are total untouchable in regards to the above comments, that once their tasks are completed they move on (their contract finishes) and our current represention is used as a policing tool in regards to the finalised agreements.

Do any of my fellow professionals agree?
How do we go about doing this?
Will any common sence prevail?

Probably not. But I bet they won't be thinking "Geez if this pilot was getting paid another $3,000 I'd have a better chance of living" ...

"Tell 'im he's drreeeamen"

Conflict of Interest
 

The moment you become a management pilot your membership of the AIPA should be supended until such time arises when you return to the ranks.During this time the AIPA offers no representation and you do not receive any information whatsoever.Your web access(AIPA) is also suspended.

Nice sentiments dirty deeds but your post speaks volumes. Tell me are you a professional pilot?

Icarus2001, yes I am. Why do you ask?

What Icarus is trying to say, dd, is that your arguments might carry more weight if you were to make use of your computer's spell checker before hitting the 'send' button. I know the marks you got in English Expression have absolutely no bearing on how you fly an aeroplane, but the fact remains, if you’re claiming ‘professional’ status, correct spelling does aid your argument, if not in all, then certainly in many people’s eyes.

I’m afraid I’m here to kick you while you’re down. You sayI’m afraid that crossroads was reached 15 years ago, when a minority of Australian pilots, but unfortunately a large enough minority, made a fateful decision that has affected everyone in the industry in the years since.

Spelling mistakes notwithstanding, I genuinely applaud your sentiments and wish you well at the crossroads you and your colleagues finds yourselves today. It is possible that the enormous damage that was started by the ‘heroes’ of 1989 can be undone, but as someone has said before me, it’s going to take a leader – and an overwhelming majority of what I’ll very inaccurately call ordinary pilots – with tremendous nerve and courage to achieve it.

Don’t for one moment think that the hurdles you will have to face are any steeper than were those faced by the pilots who established ALPA back in the 1920’s and 30’s. I urge you to read ‘Flying the Line’, the story of the establishment of US ALPA. The bastardry practised by the management (and their all too willing ‘hero’ helpers within the pilot ranks) of those times was every bit as nasty as anything management of today have thrown our way.

Dirty Deeds
I'm not a pilot, and I'm not a stirrer (well, not always).

If it was possible to get all pilots into one union, as you wish, how does the union negotiate pay and conditions for different airlines/aircraft operators? All just can't afford wages and conditions that, say, QF grant.

Could, say, QF state to the union that pay and conditions for XYZ operator which operates similar or same equipment is so much - so why should we pay more?

Please understand that I use QF only as an example as, from reading these message boards, they appear to pay the highest wages and give the most generous conditions.

Would it be better to get the total workforce of each different airline in the same union to do the bargaining/negotiations rather than many different unions pulling in different directions?

I don't know.

Andu and Icarus2001

Thanks for letting me know how intelligent and smart you both are. You have just proven the point I was trying to make in my discussion. I hope you guys never have to a make a decision that will effect your lives, cause I think I know which side of the fence you would propably sit on.
Have a great Day!

Peace Accord
 

Well so much for that attempt at accord.There will never be peace on earth and Airline Companies are well aware of this .Give it another 5 years and you will be receiving the same renumeration as a train driver.
Guess who will be to blame???

'dirty deeds', if you were as quick to take good advice as you are to bite back at what to me looked like pretty fair comments from 'Icarus2001' and 'Andu', you might get somewhere in your quest to be treated as a professional.

From where I sit, 'Icarus2001' was spot on in pointing out your many typos, and 'Andu' was only answering the question you yourself asked before going on to wish you well - and you bite his **** head off.

I'm afraid the last poster is also right in his conclusions.

I was reading some stuff on Brig. Gen Charles "Chuck" Yeager - there is a man that has done an enormous amount for aviation, who until his retirement at age 80, earned a simple service income. He said the secret to a happy life was to work where you want to work, and live within your means.

Dirty Deeds,

I started a post called "what happens next time??" about five days again that said much the same thing as you have said, (namely be proactive and have a common union). It had 5 replies and the thread then died.

Those that did reply said basically that I was too idealistic and that it would never happen because pilots are all too selfish. To me, it seems that most pilots on this forum are happy to see all the white-anting and back-dooring going on as long as it is to their betterment.

So maybe those replies are right. Pilots are too selfish and therefore we deserve what we get, and management will laugh all the way to the bank with their bonuses that we earned for them and subsidised through our reduced conditions.

In line with the spirit exhibited by most members of this board, I will be fighting to keep what I have. Watch for the next QF EBA though - if ever one was going to be voted down it will be this one.

To Animalclub, as I recall, both sides (TAA and Ansett) were represented by the AFAP prior to 1989, so there is a precedent.