Originally Posted by
georgetg
Not sure I agree.
It's right there in plain sight (and we ought to use the data):
2010 Production
(for every dollar spent on pilot pay, heres how many ASMs were produced)
DAL 93.2 $/ASM
SWA 70.6 $/ASM
That means SWA got 32% fewer ASMs from every dollar of pilot pay than Delta did in 2010.
-SWA doesn't have augmented crews
-SWA doesn't make the same contributions
-SWA made lots of money
Clearly, pilot pay isn't the factor to running a highly profitable company.
But it can be an anchor on a poorly run company.
let's see if I can make my point using some other numbers:
AS 83 $/ASM
AMR 86.4 $/ASM
Both American and Alaska show relatively low production on the bottom scale of their respective peer groups. Yet, you would never know one of these is making record profits and the other near bankruptcy looking at these numbers.
My take -- this is a good metric.
"The street" looks at metrics like ASM CASM and RASM to determine the efficiency and production of an airline.
Dollars spent/ASM on pilot compensation directly affect RASM a key metric measuring an airlines productivity.
Cheers
George
George you are correct with the metric you are using. It is a different table. My point was in direct reference to the tables I posted. Block hrs per pilot. I need to look at the raw form 41 data, but as I recall they only put total block hrs not pilot block hrs on the Form and as a result that metric is skewed.
I also agree with you pilot costs per ASM. It is a good metric to use, but again we are looking at our operation with a ton of augmentation on LH and ULH flights versus a airline with all domestic two man ops. What would be more telling is to break it out wrt to domestic and international two man versus international three and four man ops. Then you can compare apples to apples.
Of course the ops of augmented flights still have the costs associated with them, but the RASM is vastly different.