swiss air + CRX Air = (swiss-lx)=0

[HotDog]

As interesting as some of the contributions in this thread are, many seem to focus on whether or not to preserve the privileges of certain groups of employees, which is clearly an indication that "Swiss Intl Air Lines" is not a homogenous company but one that has been cobbled together to create another "Swissair" without the three last letters. No wonder then that cynics insist that "Swiss" stands for "So What - It's Still Swissair".

Very clever, Alpha "Leader", you obviously read Die Weltwoche! Nicht war?

[three_degrees]

To 773829:

Who are you pointing at? OC1 pilots wihtout the Swiss nationality perhaps? Please specify, in English please.


Come on guys, let’s face it:
Who is responsible for this whole mess?? AP? CCP? Or could it be that there are some top level managers who screwed up?
I do not blame AP for having granted their B-GAV. AP played a tough game and it seems to me they got what they wanted. But that at the same time does not justify the fact that different terms are being created for two pilot corps within the SAME company, just to make it fit into the business plan. I agree that we can argue about differences in salary OC1 vs. OC2, in the contrary there are no grounds whatsoever to grant one group of pilots more holidays, a bonus regulation, job protection/seniority usw. This has been acknowledged by a court of arbitration, a verdict which our beloved management cannot just simply put aside (though they are trying hard).
I think this whole comedy is a disgrace for a country which likes to rate itself at the top shelf of living standard and social peace and I hope our colleagues of OC2 can agree to that. Hence, you can’t blame CCP for the way they are proceeding, instead, blame management for this whole mess.

[773829]

Dear three_degrees


I do not point to non Swiss nationality. But I think there are some pilots flying in OC1, which should not. I talking of quality and age! You still have pilots, which got retired at Swissair regularly and now flying with SWISS instead of young once! As well there are pilots employed with former Crossair, only because they couldn't find good qualified pilots (Niederhalsli ...)

Everybody at Crossair knows what Swissair was asking for to become a pilot. (Ask Mr. Bieli!) So in this respect I do not think the sentence “same work – same salary”, which CCP is using all the time is the correct one, but one should say “same QUALIFICATION (I do not mean licence) – same salary”.

I agree with you, that vacation, travel expenses, social security and so on should be the same for everybody working with SWISS, but the salary depending still about your education, years in service and experience.

By the way you say that AEROPERS got what they asked for, is not correct at all. If you have a cut in Salary of about 35% plus a pension scheme, which is not half of what you expected, plus some important points in the CWA missing, plus …., you can not really say AEROPERS got all the wanted. Just one thing we got, and this is our Job, but not Crossair gave us this job. It was the government. (Swiss people – thank you!)


Best regards

[Alpha Leader]

HotDog:

Sepp Moser (who wrote the "Weltwoche" article), does not claim to have created the misnomer. It's been around for quite some time, first as a joke, now as the cynical truth. Maybe he got it from me?

[finalschecks]

Everybody at Crossair knows what Swissair was asking for to become a pilot.

Typical!

Get it in your head buddy! Swissair no longer exists! You are working for crossair now!

I agree with 3degrees... Managment screwed this one up, let THEM figure it out. It's looks like it's gonna cost them their jobs sometime soon.

[christian_MD80]

Tough way in Switzerland

@finalschecks

You are confusing me. I understand, that Swissair was closed down. Part of their personnel and equipment was handed over to Swiss, payed by your taxpayers and companies who had not much of a choice. I also understand, that on the other hand, Crossair was not immediately in danger, just in the long time of a year or two, as your longhaul operator (SR) was closed and what for is a regional airline, than to bring passengers to a longhaul operator. Now somebody could explain, why your bosses ever planned to mix the pilot corps, which have a so much different history in pilots training and the handling of the human ressource.

Is 773829 employed by Crossair? I guess not, as are you all at swiss. Crossair did safe nobody, in the opposite, it would have been better to form a completely new company, from zero, with a regional carrier and the MR/LR national carrier as your politics decided you need to have one. The number of aircraft would have been right for the planned company and no much worry about mixing people who don`t like each other. Hmm, I didn`t see too many pro swissair postings beeing that low level some of the pro crossair postings are.

I guess you all have a long way to go, and you will go together or the group with the lesser power within itself will lose even more, Ok, disregard the "even more", because that group got some rises in salary and benefits as I understood.

Anyway, good luck to you all and I do wish ex-Crossair personnel to get the salary and benefits you demand, but do you deserve it?

chris

[finalschecks]

MD80,

Sorry for having confused you, let me explain what I meant.
7745647 DOES work for crossair. It was only renamed into SWISS.

Anyway, good luck to you all and I do wish ex-Crossair personnel to get the salary and benefits you demand, but do you deserve it?

You are trying to provoke me or what? It was explained before that this is not just about money and benefits, mainly about job-security and carreer, so seniority.

Finally a serious question:

Now somebody could explain, why your bosses ever planned to mix the pilot corps, which have a so much different history in pilots training and the handling of the human ressource.

To be honest : no clue. I think the best would have been to combine the best of both worlds. Probably to late now. Too bad.

[rapide89]

Finalchecks:

The winner - looser mentality you display (and of course, you are on the winners side !) is deeply irritating. You don't need to be provoked, you do it yourself, mate !
Talking about job security and careers, there is the little side-story of 360 Ex-Swissair guys having lost theirs. But I am wasting my time here, as Chris has rightly said.
Just to put it right: The company has been renamed "Swiss International". "Crossair" does not exist anymore.

[773829]

Dear Finalchecks you wrote:

"To be honest : no clue. I think the best would have been to combine the best of both worlds. Probably to late now. Too bad."


Can you tell me what you think what would be good from old Crossair ops? (Landing somewhere else than on an airport, having 3 total losses in 2 years.., sorry, but this are facts)

I think, if they would have taken the best of the two worlds, maybe you would do something else, than you do now...., because there where some very good pilots in one of this two worlds, which had a very good qualifikation and now working somewhere else, but because they had a good background, some 60 working soon with LH! What would you have done ....?

Best regards

[Albatros6]

Swiss

Well, the mix of the companies was done after the original Plan did not work. Crossair is known to have had to stop pilots working in order not to exceed 1000 hrs/year. So why did they have a workforce too big last summer? They were preparing to overtake all the business in Switzerland, by grounding SWISSAIR with the help of UBS. (one of the both big banks in Switzerland) Only the reaction of the grounding was too big, so the government, which was offloaded some days before, walked in again, but somehow was still not knowing what Crossair really was. Instead of building a really new Company they build on the "smart and clever and running well and so profitable Crossair" (it could have been done also on on other companys).
Then would have been the time to take the best of both worlds...
The Crossair Managment took the opportunity and made a business-plan 3times as expensive, and asked the SWISSAIR-Pilots to reduce the Salary by 35%. Neither of it was expected to get trough, but both, the government and the pilots agreed. (well, had to...) So the company is now run by its former daughter, having the problem of a regional-pilot-corps which was promised the stars, but still sits in a cellar with a flashlight. One of the only things the managment now can do for them is to try to have one class of pilots only, but economically it does'nt make sense...

[three_degrees]

Dear 772839

Thank you for showing your ubermensch attitude towards your ex-crx colleagues. Very professional. If you'll continue to display such motivations during your career with Swiss (for as long it's gonna last...) we're going to have a niiiiiice time together.
Sure, you have a point there with the safety record of my former airline. I'm not going to defend that. But you know just like everyone else in here that it was not just ex-crx who experienced total-losses. That's all I got to say to that, the best pilots with the biggest mouths are always sitting on the ground you know...
Open your mind dude, there is not just that one 'right' way of doing things, though it seems like you are very much indoctrinated
by the 'quality' of your former boss's operating filosophy (if we'd measure that by the amount of earrings I see passing by there in ZRH-ops every day, I'm not so impressed.... )
And for some 60 of your colleagues who did so well with LH, I'm truly happy for them! They're a hundred thousand times better off than they would be with Swiss!

Come on man, put those pre-assumptions aside, and maybe then we'll go somewhere from here.

[773829]

Dear Three Degrees


I not think that the ex SR Pilots are something like "Übermenschen". I am just talking of qualification. It is a difference if you do your training and your flight hours just somewhere and somehow to get a licence ore you do a 1 1/2 year training, where everything you are doing is a qualified item and at the end of this period they decide if the going to employ you or not. So I still think we talking "same qualification - same salary".

And by the way I am not looking forward to work with people thinking things about me, like written in the "Klagschrift"!!!!

Another word about safety. What about the statement from your union boss Mr. Bieli, that the regional pilots having a safety problem, because of the fight between CCP and SWISS. In this case it would be better not to fly….


Best regards

[Alpha Leader]

The mythical "35"

Interesting article written in today's "Weltwoche" by Swissair fan and aviation journalist Sepp Moser:

http://www.weltwoche.ch/ressort_beri...category_id=59

A hasty translation for non-German speakers:

****************************************************
Remuneration cuts of more than one third for previous SR pilots was one of the preconditions on which Swiss was founded. However, salaries have not actually dropped to that extent.

One of the most interesting myths surrounding Swiss International Air Lines is that of its pilots’ remuneration. When Swiss took over the pilots from collapsed Swissair, official word was that they would have to accept salary sacrifices amounting to 35%. This mythical figures has since been bandied around and reached near-universal acceptance as a fact, but it is indeed wrong, as shown by the following two examples:

Young F/O X has four years of service. His basic salary at former SR was just above CHF 100,000 p.a. At Swiss, he is now earning CHF108,700, an increase of 7%. Although he now has to contribute half of his contributions to the retirement fund himself (SR used to pay all contributions), his net payout is still somewhat higher than at former SR. So: no trace of any 35% salary sacrifice.

Experience Capt. Y has a record of thirty years and is thus at the top of the seniority scale. His basic salary went from formerly CHF300,000 to now CHF236,027, a decrease of 21%. Together with the change in contributions to the retirement fund (as F/O X, he now has to pay half of the contributions himself), his net salary is 30% below his former earnings. Internal documents reveal that in fact not one single former SR pilot’s remuneration has dropped by 35%. On average, the sacrifice is actually around 20%.

Given these figures, how did the myth of low salaries come to be? An analysis makes interesting reading.


Budget variance

First: Back in April 2001, when Mario Corti was undertaking his ill-fated attempts at rescuing SR, the company’s pilots agreed to a salary sacrifice of around 5%. The oft-mentioned reduction of 35% is, in fact, based on pilots’ salaries prior to that sacrifice, not on their level when SR went into liquidation.

Second: About 350 former SR pilots were terminated when the company collapsed. The accounting method applied then initially attributed the freed up salaries (amounting to around CHF12 million p.a.) to the pool of “survivors” but was then immediately cut back in what was declared a cost-reduction exercise.

Third: Even with some lawyers disputing this, the legal manoeuvre applied during the salvaging of former SR can be seen to be a merger or acquisition (Article 333 of Swiss Commercial Code). Accordingly, Swiss would be obliged to pay former SR employees their full entitlements as per their workplace agreement valid through 2005, and failing this, former SR pilots would have reasonably good chances if they were to file a lawsuit. They signed away their rights to do so by squeezing an extra CHF5 million p.a. for the remuneration pool from Swiss. All said, Swiss pays its total of 850 ex-SR pilots (of which 829 are full-time) an average of CHF203,530 p.a. This is a total remuneration budget of CHF173 million, which is CHF18 million more than in the forecast, even if Swiss boss André Dosé and his team do not advertise this. The 1,050 ex-Crossair pilots (970 of them full-time), however, are only paid an average of CHF95,240 p.a. for what is essentially the same work (except for some higher workload on long haul flights) but, interestingly, for achieving a significantly higher rate of productivity in terms of revenue per pilot per month.


Mishaps with SR-crews

At other airlines that have combined their long haul and regional services under one corporate roof (something that is comparatively rare on a global scale), all pilots are on the same remuneration scale. At SAS, for instance, a pilot taking his 50-seater to Sundsvall will have the same monthly salary as his colleague with the same seniority in terms of years of service who flies to Chicago with 260 passengers. Even at SBB (Swiss Railways) there is no difference in remuneration between engineers with short and long trains. There could, of course, be an argument that better paid pilots offer a higher level of safety than their “cheaper” colleagues. And indeed, there hardly seems to be a week without some mishap being reported with a Crossair flight. In contrast, hardly anything seems to go wrong with the long-haul fleet. Alas, upon closer inspection this does not reflect the facts.

Official statistics on irregularity reports show that in May and June 2002, the ex-SR fleet undertook some 12,141 commercial flights compared with 27,384 by the ex-Crossair fleet. Excluding near mid-air misses, 20 irregularity reports were filed for the ex-SR fleet against 39 for the ex-Crossair fleet. In other words, 1 in every 607 ex-SR flight was reported, but only 1 in every 702 ex-Crossair flights.

Very few mishaps that have occurred with former SR pilots have made it to the media. One such unreported incident is an A321 which went on a wrong heading after take-off from Zurich. Or the crew of an A330 which only at around 30,000 feet realized they had not retracted flaps to cruising configuration, much as a bus driver would become aware after having covered around 50km that his handbrake was still applied.
**************************************************

[Alpha Leader]

studi:

Productivity of pilots, as mentioned in the article, is defined as "revenue per pilot per month", meaning the revenue from all pax carried by a particular pilot.

If you look at the heavy discounting on long haul routes, it does not defy logic that a regional pilot can earn more revenue than his long haul counterpart.

Now if you were a "Swiss Intl Air Lines" accountant, your next step on the calculator would be to work out "profitability", i.e. the revenue per pilot per month minus his/her salary. Given the discrepancy between the salaries of former SR pilots and former Crossair pilots, you can well imagine how dramatic that yawning gap must be.

[Alpha Leader]

studi:

The point is that pax on regional flights almost without exception pay much higher prices per mile than those on long-haul.

Second, regional pilots perform far more flights per month than long haul pilots.

Third, the ratio of business travellers vs. leisure travellers is in most cases much higher on regional and commuter flights than on long haul flights, which translates into higher average revenue per seat and mile on regional flights.

Fourth, the current Swiss long haul network is particularly tourist-friendly. There was criticism at the time that they were not picking up some high-revenue destinations in Africa (which AF have a virtual monopoly on) and some suspicion that Swiss were providing long haul routes to "nice places" out of less-than-commercial considerations.

[773829]

This statement about incidents on big aircraft at Swiss is a typical one from Sepp Moser - only telling half of the story.

In all big aircraft we have a data unit which is evaluated after each flight by computers. On the small once some have, but the data’s are not used yet.

So if we talk about incidents in Swiss, we have to look at the numbers in this respect!

For the part about productivity, Mr. Moser is just writing something without knowledge! It is quit simple to calculate how many pilots an aircraft needs to be operated. If you make this calculation there are at least 200 pilots to many on the small aircrafts.

Last a word about our salaries. If you take the money Swissair had to pay for a pilot and the money Swiss is now paying, you just getting the famous 35% difference (Salary, pension scheme, travel expenses, insurance…). But as usual the brilliant writer of this article in the “Weltwoche” is writing again something he likes to believe and not the facts.

[Alpha Leader]

773829:

How would you calculate pilot productivity? There is little to argue about when it comes to straightforward mathematics.

But more interestingly, you mention that Sepp Moser (in respect of productivity) is writing "without knowledge". Do you have other figures to demonstrate your point?

[773829]

Yes it is quit simple. Just take a figure, lets say about 8 to 10 pilots for one shorthaul aircraft. That gives you at the end more or less the numbers of pilots you need to operate one aircraft. This figure again times the numbers of aircraft in an airline like the former crossair part with about 80 airplanes equals to about 640 to 800 pilots.

[skypointer]

Are you guys serious? Are you really discussing a Depp Moser article in a professional pilot forum? How deep have you sunken?

Our dear friend Depp Moser, after crashlanding his Cessana due to an omitted the fuel/water check, wrote that it were Swissair pilots who put the water in his tanks. Nice try! Unfortunately for him accident investigation proved him wrong: he just didn't do a fuel/water check after leaving his toyplane in the rain for 3 month. So much for his credibility...:o

Even the media seem to have ralized that only bull**** comes from Depp - except for the Weltwoche of course. But then, Weltwoche seems to publish just about every crap lately. I heard they are soon going to call themseves Swiss National Enquirer - or have I just dreamt that?

Repeating lies doesn't make them any more true and our dear Depp is a severe case for the shrinks. That's just about all that is to say here!

[what_goes_up]

Hoi studi
first of all, congratulation for LH. Hope you enjoy it there. When do you start?
To come back to your question from above: No it is not possible to climb to FL330 with flaps extended with a A330. Besides the warnings the bus would start to retract the flaps itself in an overspeed situation. I recall that even an older craft like MD11 would do so in some way. I think it was called Flap relief ( isn't it 773829 )