Pilot's Cooperative Airline
 

Given the current economic conditions I just wondered if anyone had given any thought to a "Pilot's Cooperative Airline"?

All employees would have a stake in the Company (however small) and in the event of a profit would have a pro rata share.

Obviously we would hire suitable accountants but it would be interesting to see pilots running an airline.

Would it/could it work? Any ideas?

You need more than just pilots to run an airline, but a co-op of all the different people needed could work I suppose.

Interesting idea and worth a bit of thought.

Well, you can start with a role model.

Willie Walsh

Good luck, you'll need it.

SAS, thanks - that's what I really meant!

Interesting idea. Before you give it too much grey matter time, have a word with (Prof) Tony Eccles. He got himself involved in workers co-ops some time ago. Worth talking to. He can be googled.

Also, pilots are a funny lot. In my very limited experience, many, (too many) pilots want to turn up fly the bus, and go home. Pilots that give a monkeys about "managing" something are very rare. They would rather go home, and then moan about their managers on pprune.

Sounds similar to the Employee Stock Ownership Program as attempted by United Airlines back in the 90s. Employee groups bought a massive amount of the company's stock, but somehow failed to get proportional representation on the board of directors. When the company declared bankruptcy following September 11, the stock became worthless in both a financial and representational sense. The whole experience soured a lot of people on the idea, from what I've seen.

Very "socialist" idea, something like sending the lamb among the wolves, these days...

I would love to see a "workshop" set up but as the quoted post says you need a coop made of many other "socialists". Not an easy task...

DK :suspect:

Perhaps I erred in calling the thread Pilots' Cooperative.

What I was thinking of was an airline where all employees are stakeholders who in good times would be rewarded commensurately. (Am sure we can think of profits made recently by certain airlines, none of which goes back to the workforce!)

I am by no means an expert but I believe John Lewis work along these lines?

thepotata232, I take on board what you say about United Airlines so it would be necessary to ensure the Ts and Cs are suitable.

Pilots cooperate?

Fireflybob,

Very interesting! I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about a cooperative airline setup the way you mention. There are examples like WestJet in Canada and to a certain extent Southwest where employee is much more involved in the airline as a whole. And they seem to be doing well financially and are very popular as an employer.

Also you can see coorperatives in other very specific lines of work, for example amongst medical specialist and harbour pilots to name a few.

I think the coorporative model makes a strong business case. A good way to avoid a greedy (and very costly) management. The major challenge will be to get the people with the right mind and skill set together from the very start.

Happy to exchange ideas

The problem,certainly as far as pilots are concerned ( and I suspect we are not the only employee group thus burdened) is, in spite of CRM courses, etc, we are all basically Type A "Me Me Me" personalities ,who, whilst actually caring for other people, tend to always put ourselves 1st in that list.
Collective short-sightdness combined with that trait is why (so far) Unions have never arrived in RYR (& probably never will)
The clever ,& yes , downright dastardly/ evil part of the Ryanair business model, involved ,initially, before the bullying set in, using our natural "charming" personality streaks (egotism/selfishness/tunnel vision) to enable them to control us, by the cunning means of having us screwing each other, & thereby losing sight of the big picture.
From what I have seen, before/during/ & after RYR, I am left somewhat sceptical that we (as a profession) are capable of being generous enough of spirit to make it work.
Sad, yes, but probably the reality.

captplaystation, I understand what you are saying but the situation in Ryr is after the horse has bolted.

The idea is to start with a clean sheet. Those offered employment would have the terms of reference spelled out from the start in the form of a binding contract.

I think in this scenario pilots (and all crew and staff) would be far more united that is apparent elsewhere and indeed would be more motivated if their views were honestly taken into account.

Hi there

I did work on such a coop airline 10 years ago.
We went up to the stage of getting a tax refund of 14 Million Euros on two A340 transaction.
The idea was very welcomed by some high Government managers just because it was of common sense.
Employees of a productive outfit were sharing the benefits of the result of their own work and assets were rent to investors in competition.
In fact, money goes to work and not to money a real mean to help the consumation society working good.
No socialism or communism either in this kind of Company only workers working together and sharing together good or bad things.
This kind of outfit is able to work on a breakeven budget if necessary and to lower its costs during hard times very easily.
The only and main problem today is where and on witch kind of network it can work.
The low cost sector is owned by financials able to make a massive order of hauls and make money on this only deal of assets.
The classic long haul is saturated.
The only remaining market is tour operating if you are able to convince them to compete on something else than transportation.
Maybe you can make a refund chamber for a compensation comensurate with the number of seats generated.
Sorry guys for my writen English as not my mother language.
Anyway good to see such idea is back as I still believe its the ultimate solution for everybody workers and financials.
Concerning the answer to why we did not do it is that our competitor who still makes money on the network we were looking for took our business plan and started with A330's as we had to wait for 2 years for the A340-600.
There was no way to start the business on a smaller aircraft as it was not fitting to our BP and no way to start after this competitor.

And one very important point. The owners had the same amount of shares in the business witch was owned not only by pilots but by all the employees. The number of managers was the minimum and a lot of things subcontracted.
This was a way to make a difference between the salary to compensate a responsability and share to compensate equally the benefits of the Entity called Airline.

DDay mates and good luck:ok:

irishpilot1990, I think you are making some assumptions there.

I agree that given the amounts of money to get an airline off the ground it would be necessary to have investment from other sources.

But the key point is to have the remuneration of staff (above an agreed minimum) linked to the performance of the Company on an annual basis. If the Company make a profit then all staff members would share in that profit on a pro rata basis.

dont forget greed bob, thats the cause of all the problems today. a fair society does not and will never exist due to greed. it is within our nature. we used to club our rivals to death...now thats now allowed anymore so the club is now money and the more you have the bigger your club is.
in theory your idea works fine but in practice as has been shown time and time again we humans are incapable of a fair system for all.

Of course any Company can go bust but that isn't a valid reason for not rewarding employees commensurate with a Company's performance! If a Company fails then everyone in the employ loses!

Do you want to be a pilot or a company owner?

How much money will you put in - will you remortgage your house & risk all your assets?

Talk is cheap, but enough pilots committing hard cash to such a venture will not happen.

I am disappointed but not surprised that people seem so negative about this concept!

One of the best companies I ever worked for had a profit sharing scheme. If we made a profit we all got a bonus at the end of the year. If the Company made a loss we got no bonus.

Am not on a crusade for a "fairer society" (whatever that is) but I do think that the modus operandi of some leading companies now is very down trend and that their business models mean they will not be around in 5/10 years from now.

It's a whole raft of things but whatever business you are in I believe you are in the "people" business. It's all about relationships with people (customers, staff, contractors etc). I would suggest that if you get that right you are well on your way to having a longer term business.

FANS, who said anything about people remortgaging houses etc? However I am suggesting that all staff would have some sort of "stake" in the Company - it's more a change of attitude. I believe there was a very good documentary about John Lewis where such a system exists. Staff input into the decision making process was encouraged (as indeed is also the case with Southwest airlines).

When you read the postings on PPrune (ok yes I know that may not be totally representative) there seem to be a lot of employees that really detest who they work and the way their work is organised. Surely there is a better way?

Regardless of ownership structure, the fact is that anyone who is seriously contemplating starting a new airline in the current and foreseeable-future economic climate, needs their head examined.

FFB - other than by remortgaging (which in itself wouldn't provide enough ££), please let me know where the significant funds pilots would require to start this airline will come from?

Any start-up often requires personal guarantees.

Where will the finance for aircraft/upfront working capital/initial trading losses/massive start-up costs/CAA/ABTA bonding etc etc come from?

There's a massive difference between a small employee profit share with an established business and a start-up venture.