I went on the BTS website and pulled Pinnacle's annual report for 2010, which was the latest one I could find on its website, just to play with some numbers. Actually, I was really bored and wanted to make sure I could still find my way around the BTS website

Anyway, according to Pinnacle's 2010 annual report, they made about 1 billion in total revenue. They paid ALL of their employees (Pinnacle 9E, Mesaba XJ, Colgan 9L) $310M. Of that, pilots were paid $138.7M** according to what they reported to the government.

So they want you guys to take a 5% paycut? 5% of $138.7M is worth about 7M.

Seven million dollars on 1 billion in revenue? Pinnacle's total expenses in 2010, including interest expense are around 1 billion as well. That's practically a rounding error! What's the point?

I gotta agree with the Pinnacle pilots. That 5% cut will do NOTHING to solve Pinnacle's problems, whatever they are.



**I'm pretty sure that number is CLOSE. Mesaba's reported pilot expense numbers seemed kind of high as a % of total salaries compared to Colgan and Pinnacle that year. Was there some sort of big, one time expense paid to Mesaba pilots in 2010?