BA to make U-Turn in their Business plan
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CRP5,
I am not going to get dragged into a written slanging match with people; what is the point? There is no way, that whatever I say, on any subject is going be respected by certain people.
If you look at all my posts, I ask for pilots opinions, and give those opinions the due respect they deserve; Something that I do not think some people do!
With respect to posting on company time; I have a clear conscience. I incurred no extra costs to the company. If you belive I did, I will explain how I didn't (in a personal email...I will not justify myself publically). So any quotes of "spending my profit share", are completely without substance. You obvisouly do not take breaks; is that counted as company time? I am not paid for my breaks, are you? Something that I have posted, but will repeat; I do NOT get a profit share!
I still hold the dream of one day walking into the cockpit as a pilot, but will I be looked down on, not respected, because I have chosen a temporary career in management? If so, I don't think it would be worth it!!!
Exeng, I have got some figures for RPK's for BA, but am having a few problems getting other carriers data to make a proper comparison. I have also just thought, that it will not include the cargo airlines carry. Cargo staff are included in the figures for total employees, but not in RPKS. I will try and come up with an alternative, but cannot think of anything at the moment! I will get back to you. Maybe you would like to email me?
[This message has been edited by DPIT (edited 26 June 2001).]
I am not going to get dragged into a written slanging match with people; what is the point? There is no way, that whatever I say, on any subject is going be respected by certain people.
If you look at all my posts, I ask for pilots opinions, and give those opinions the due respect they deserve; Something that I do not think some people do!
With respect to posting on company time; I have a clear conscience. I incurred no extra costs to the company. If you belive I did, I will explain how I didn't (in a personal email...I will not justify myself publically). So any quotes of "spending my profit share", are completely without substance. You obvisouly do not take breaks; is that counted as company time? I am not paid for my breaks, are you? Something that I have posted, but will repeat; I do NOT get a profit share!
I still hold the dream of one day walking into the cockpit as a pilot, but will I be looked down on, not respected, because I have chosen a temporary career in management? If so, I don't think it would be worth it!!!
Exeng, I have got some figures for RPK's for BA, but am having a few problems getting other carriers data to make a proper comparison. I have also just thought, that it will not include the cargo airlines carry. Cargo staff are included in the figures for total employees, but not in RPKS. I will try and come up with an alternative, but cannot think of anything at the moment! I will get back to you. Maybe you would like to email me?
[This message has been edited by DPIT (edited 26 June 2001).]
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CRP5,
To be completely honest, I would love to witness what goes on behind the screen (so to speak!). I think that it would be educational for me!
I hopefully, will be doing this soon as I do have some freinds who operate out of LHR.
Thank you for your offer!
To be completely honest, I would love to witness what goes on behind the screen (so to speak!). I think that it would be educational for me!
I hopefully, will be doing this soon as I do have some freinds who operate out of LHR.
Thank you for your offer!
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DPIT,
I would e-mail you but unfortunately you have shown no e-mail address. You can e-mail me at [email protected]
It might take me a couple of days to reply.
Regards
Exeng
I would e-mail you but unfortunately you have shown no e-mail address. You can e-mail me at [email protected]
It might take me a couple of days to reply.
Regards
Exeng
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DPIT
I sincerely hope that you can progress to a flying career. When you get there you will realise why a senior captain is worth $210000 p.a.
I am sorry if you feel offended by some of the comments posted, but some of us really are sick about how management inadequacies are ruining our careers, and this frustration is vented when someone such as yourself sticks their head above the wall.
Let's all hope that a u turn will come.
[This message has been edited by MrUppity (edited 27 June 2001).]
I sincerely hope that you can progress to a flying career. When you get there you will realise why a senior captain is worth $210000 p.a.
I am sorry if you feel offended by some of the comments posted, but some of us really are sick about how management inadequacies are ruining our careers, and this frustration is vented when someone such as yourself sticks their head above the wall.
Let's all hope that a u turn will come.
[This message has been edited by MrUppity (edited 27 June 2001).]
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DPIT,
We pilots are all used to 'continuous feed back' and having to justify our opinions and decisions, sometimes in a kangerou court or legal court. It's a pilot thing....!!
So as a PPRuNer you must expect the same treatment.
I believe that BA pilots are under paid compaired to the market rates and BA have started to lose pilots to other airlines for the first time I can remember!
When I sign for the aircraft I'm personally responsible for it and all those onboard. The financial responsibility to the company is very large and equivalent to many many many hundreds of millions of pounds. Not to mention the good name of the company which is priceless. We are not drivers but add real value to the customers and safely do our jobs every day, every month, every year.
This should be enough justification to support the view that most BA Pilots, like so many others, are under paid IMHO.
I'm sure you would learn a lot from spending a full four sector day in shorhaul and a while in longhaul too. Just ask at LHR to do so and I'm sure you would be made welcome.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz......
[This message has been edited by The Zombie (edited 27 June 2001).]
We pilots are all used to 'continuous feed back' and having to justify our opinions and decisions, sometimes in a kangerou court or legal court. It's a pilot thing....!!
So as a PPRuNer you must expect the same treatment.
I believe that BA pilots are under paid compaired to the market rates and BA have started to lose pilots to other airlines for the first time I can remember!
When I sign for the aircraft I'm personally responsible for it and all those onboard. The financial responsibility to the company is very large and equivalent to many many many hundreds of millions of pounds. Not to mention the good name of the company which is priceless. We are not drivers but add real value to the customers and safely do our jobs every day, every month, every year.
This should be enough justification to support the view that most BA Pilots, like so many others, are under paid IMHO.
I'm sure you would learn a lot from spending a full four sector day in shorhaul and a while in longhaul too. Just ask at LHR to do so and I'm sure you would be made welcome.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz......
[This message has been edited by The Zombie (edited 27 June 2001).]
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You lot are really sad having a go at DPIT, working in an office may mean he/she uses their statutory (lunch) break spread bit by bit over the day and replies to your schoolboy tirades as and when. This web page could be left on all day to monitor the site, and with a fixed line rental it will be at no cost.
But some of you (and I mean only some of you)think you are so bl*"dy amusing and the only important thing in an airline that whatever you say MUST BE RIGHT.
Well welcome to the real world, you are just ONE cog in a very big machine. Without all the other larger and smaller cogs you would amont to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! So bear that in mind the next time your mouth out accelerates your brains.
But some of you (and I mean only some of you)think you are so bl*"dy amusing and the only important thing in an airline that whatever you say MUST BE RIGHT.
Well welcome to the real world, you are just ONE cog in a very big machine. Without all the other larger and smaller cogs you would amont to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! So bear that in mind the next time your mouth out accelerates your brains.
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HaHaHa,
h'AIRBRAIN
'Well welcome to the real world, you are just ONE cog in a very big machine. Without all the other larger and smaller cogs you would amount to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! So bear that in mind the next time your mouth out accelerates your brains'.
This is so true and I agree with you!
But who leads that team and who is completely accountable. Yes the pilots.
Do planes fly by themselves ? NO.
Just a thought and glad to see your reasoned arguement added to the thread.
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz......
h'AIRBRAIN
'Well welcome to the real world, you are just ONE cog in a very big machine. Without all the other larger and smaller cogs you would amount to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! So bear that in mind the next time your mouth out accelerates your brains'.
This is so true and I agree with you!
But who leads that team and who is completely accountable. Yes the pilots.
Do planes fly by themselves ? NO.
Just a thought and glad to see your reasoned arguement added to the thread.
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz......
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Point 1. There are people who live off the backs of others by being paid to do a job that produces no wealth, like bean counters, bank / office workers etc. Then you have the people who create the dosh to pay for the aforemetioned like factory workers, pilots,engineers, etc. Unfotunatley the former almost always dictate terms to the latter.
Point 2. If you take even a small commuter turboprop and fill it with 50 punters , half of them "suits", you have probably got about £100 million in collective liabillity every time you get airborne, if you take into account the hull ,high net worth individuals, etc so the guys and gals at the sharp end are between them being paid £55 - 60 k a year to manage that liabillity , on a daily basis sometimes up to 6 sectors a day in all weathers. I wonder what other profession whould put up with being so grossly under paid.
Point 2. If you take even a small commuter turboprop and fill it with 50 punters , half of them "suits", you have probably got about £100 million in collective liabillity every time you get airborne, if you take into account the hull ,high net worth individuals, etc so the guys and gals at the sharp end are between them being paid £55 - 60 k a year to manage that liabillity , on a daily basis sometimes up to 6 sectors a day in all weathers. I wonder what other profession whould put up with being so grossly under paid.
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Flaps 8 nicely said, AF concord AVERAGE payout per person £1 million, my 737 carries when full 147 pax .... work it out!The average desk jockey at Waterworld would $hit themselves being held ACCOUNTABLE for that much cash! And I mean actually accountable, not wots on paper!
Airbrain nice first post wind up man, now get your head out your ar$e, I welcome DPITS posts ,said it before and I will say it again!
Airbrain nice first post wind up man, now get your head out your ar$e, I welcome DPITS posts ,said it before and I will say it again!
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Wow, away for one day and the replies start to add up!!!
Zombie; Thank you for your post. I can see the Pilots point of view concerning 'constant feedback', and probably with hindsight, could have reacted a little less than I did. I can understand the justification for Pilots being paid a lot more than other transport positions (sorry about if that offends...but could not think of another description), as the major, and VERY simplistic difference is that you can not pull over in the sky. However, (not trying a wind up here!) would you compare pilots to surgeons in terms of responsibility? Not sure how much surgeons earn, so this is an honest question! And yes zombie.....I was working yesterday...and on the p**s last night, hence the lack of posts yesterday!
h'AIRBRAIN...I would have to agree with CRP5. Nice first wind up post. Although your first paragraph does explain my day time posts, I did not want to make that explicit. I stated that I would email the reasons to people privately, but not publically; Somthing that you obvisouly felt you needed to do.
MrUppity and all...I do hope that some day I will be able to join your fraternity, and hopefully will be able to bring knowledge and experience from my management career, that will be useful in my pilot career, and eventually for the company.
With regard to doing a day at either LGW or LHR, I will certainly be doing it. My friends are long-haul...would short haul be more educational?
[This message has been edited by DPIT (edited 28 June 2001).]
Zombie; Thank you for your post. I can see the Pilots point of view concerning 'constant feedback', and probably with hindsight, could have reacted a little less than I did. I can understand the justification for Pilots being paid a lot more than other transport positions (sorry about if that offends...but could not think of another description), as the major, and VERY simplistic difference is that you can not pull over in the sky. However, (not trying a wind up here!) would you compare pilots to surgeons in terms of responsibility? Not sure how much surgeons earn, so this is an honest question! And yes zombie.....I was working yesterday...and on the p**s last night, hence the lack of posts yesterday!
h'AIRBRAIN...I would have to agree with CRP5. Nice first wind up post. Although your first paragraph does explain my day time posts, I did not want to make that explicit. I stated that I would email the reasons to people privately, but not publically; Somthing that you obvisouly felt you needed to do.
MrUppity and all...I do hope that some day I will be able to join your fraternity, and hopefully will be able to bring knowledge and experience from my management career, that will be useful in my pilot career, and eventually for the company.
With regard to doing a day at either LGW or LHR, I will certainly be doing it. My friends are long-haul...would short haul be more educational?
[This message has been edited by DPIT (edited 28 June 2001).]
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DPITS you certainly know how to get a response, I could not comment on long haul, so would say a 4 sector day short haul would be educational, hopefully the Weather would be cr@p as well, because this is where I think I work hardest (comments welcome)
However once went into MCO in a nasty storm (as a pax)wondered what it would be like to cruise for 7 hours then ready myself for that +RA TSGR wind VRB40G55! plenty of coffee no doubt!!
However once went into MCO in a nasty storm (as a pax)wondered what it would be like to cruise for 7 hours then ready myself for that +RA TSGR wind VRB40G55! plenty of coffee no doubt!!
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guys guys guys. Here we go again. I am not a pilot as I have made clear before. I am really sad yet again that when an non-pilot comes on the forum and dares to question a pilot's beliefs he is immediately jumped on and personally abused. Really sad cos so many of you the pilots ideas are good ones and to be honest to many of you demean yourselves by resorting to personal abuse rather than allow your arguements to stand for themselves.
Are pilots worth the money. I find myself in a quandry. 99% (probably more) of the time I perceive the job to be relatively easy indeed possibly if I may say so dull. Certainly this is the view expressed by my many pilot friends and colleagues. The other 1% (or less) of the time, when something goes slightly wrong or worse, a pilot carries a responsibility for other peoples lives that frankly I would rather not have and earn every bean and more.
Ultimately surely it comes down to personal choice. You guys all knew when you went into the career pretty much what the salary packages you could aspire to. If you didnt think the trade off between salary and responsibility was fair then you should have done something else.
Finally can we please cut this us and them attitude towards your colleagues in other roles in the airline. No airline can exist without its pilots its true, equally no airline can exist without its cabin crew, enginers, ground services, commercial people, sales force, ops controllers, accountants, secretaries, cleaners and yes its management. The vast majority of these people do their best each day to build the airline. Treat these people with respect and you will earn their respect, look down upon them or regard yourselves as superior by dint of your job and you will earn the contempt you deserve.
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I am not a professional pilot, but I have a close relative who is one of your number on short haul out of LGW. I am by training an ethnographic researcher, and I specialise in people at work. I do some research and consultancy work in the airline industry.
Within the past two years I have tracked a surgeon in a large hospital for a number of days, and I have also sat in the jump seat with my relative on a four sector day on two occasions. I treated those days as a research project, although I was just being curious about what my relative does for a living.
My professional conclusion from comparing those two days is - it's a draw. Yes, I believe pilots deserve to be paid as much as surgeons. Although that is an over-simplified statement. I think that pay systems for given professions need to be thought of across a whole career trajectory. Simple annual pay comparisons are too crude a measure.
My main observation for this discussion is that a job description for someone flying short haul in and out of LGW and in European airspace generally gives only a tenuous link to what doing that job is actually like. My notes for one of the days records 86 unanticipated disruptions to the planned flow of work. Some of these were minor and quickly dealt with, but others produced flow on pressures (e.g. "there is a military aircraft in your sector which has just declared an emergency, and we have lost contact with it"). On the worst of the days I observed the surgeon he had 42 such disturbances.
The reason for this difference is that an operating theatre is a closed (and therefore relatively easily controlled) system once the door is closed, but an airliner enters an OPEN system once the door is closed. (This is a double edged comment. My main concern about the way pilots view the world is that they have a predisposition to regard their flight decks as a closed system, and therefore they often discount and underestimate the significance of the feedback loops with the environment).
In any event I now believe that it is impossible for anyone in airline management to make sensible management decisions unless they have direct experience of what actually happens in day to day flight operations. Even if they were to commission someone like me to write a report on it, that would be no adequate substitute for direct personal experience.
In a post of reasonable length it is not possible to explain why I also believe that the empirically demonstrable differences between the work of airline pilots and that of other sorts of 'drivers' is far, far more than just 'they can't pull over and stop'.
Within the past two years I have tracked a surgeon in a large hospital for a number of days, and I have also sat in the jump seat with my relative on a four sector day on two occasions. I treated those days as a research project, although I was just being curious about what my relative does for a living.
My professional conclusion from comparing those two days is - it's a draw. Yes, I believe pilots deserve to be paid as much as surgeons. Although that is an over-simplified statement. I think that pay systems for given professions need to be thought of across a whole career trajectory. Simple annual pay comparisons are too crude a measure.
My main observation for this discussion is that a job description for someone flying short haul in and out of LGW and in European airspace generally gives only a tenuous link to what doing that job is actually like. My notes for one of the days records 86 unanticipated disruptions to the planned flow of work. Some of these were minor and quickly dealt with, but others produced flow on pressures (e.g. "there is a military aircraft in your sector which has just declared an emergency, and we have lost contact with it"). On the worst of the days I observed the surgeon he had 42 such disturbances.
The reason for this difference is that an operating theatre is a closed (and therefore relatively easily controlled) system once the door is closed, but an airliner enters an OPEN system once the door is closed. (This is a double edged comment. My main concern about the way pilots view the world is that they have a predisposition to regard their flight decks as a closed system, and therefore they often discount and underestimate the significance of the feedback loops with the environment).
In any event I now believe that it is impossible for anyone in airline management to make sensible management decisions unless they have direct experience of what actually happens in day to day flight operations. Even if they were to commission someone like me to write a report on it, that would be no adequate substitute for direct personal experience.
In a post of reasonable length it is not possible to explain why I also believe that the empirically demonstrable differences between the work of airline pilots and that of other sorts of 'drivers' is far, far more than just 'they can't pull over and stop'.
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Well now.
12 hours work in an office with coffee and potty breaks whenever, and lunch of course; what and when you choose. Then you can relieve the boredom with forays on the internet a well. So how many effective hours are really worked? Most probably about 5 hours if that.
Seems a little bit of prioritisation and organisation would not go amiss. At the end of the day what has been achieved?
[This message has been edited by pterodactyl (edited 28 June 2001).]
12 hours work in an office with coffee and potty breaks whenever, and lunch of course; what and when you choose. Then you can relieve the boredom with forays on the internet a well. So how many effective hours are really worked? Most probably about 5 hours if that.
Seems a little bit of prioritisation and organisation would not go amiss. At the end of the day what has been achieved?
[This message has been edited by pterodactyl (edited 28 June 2001).]
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Sorry DPIT, did not mean to spill the beans on how you may or may not spend your day. All I meant to do was put across an example of how someone could use this site and do a meaningful days work.
Good to see some reasoned replies on this thread, so many in the past (and this one was starting to go that way) get to personal.
Back to the point, salary levels are primarily based upon supply and demand. With the pilot profession being one that many people aspire to and can achieve, this means there are many of you around. Lots of you available equals no pressure on salaries to increase to attract you. The surgeon's salary levels maybe higher due to the limited number of people that are available with that level of expertise.
So basically the point is, stop all those aspiring teenagers who want to become pilots and before long your salaies will go up as airline compete to attract you.
If you keep whinging constently like you do then I am sure it will put at least one youngster off. KEEP IT UP!
Good to see some reasoned replies on this thread, so many in the past (and this one was starting to go that way) get to personal.
Back to the point, salary levels are primarily based upon supply and demand. With the pilot profession being one that many people aspire to and can achieve, this means there are many of you around. Lots of you available equals no pressure on salaries to increase to attract you. The surgeon's salary levels maybe higher due to the limited number of people that are available with that level of expertise.
So basically the point is, stop all those aspiring teenagers who want to become pilots and before long your salaies will go up as airline compete to attract you.
If you keep whinging constently like you do then I am sure it will put at least one youngster off. KEEP IT UP!