Originally Posted by
Will
My logic I think is pretty simple. A pilot hired at age 30 will top out at age 42, giving them 23 years at the top of the pay scale. Hire a 45 year old pilot, that pilot only rides the top of the pay scale for 8 years. A much cheaper employee to employ for the length of there career. Not only in pay, but vacation, sick time, etc. I agree Delta does not have to look for a replacement pilot for 35 years compared to 23. But at this current time replacement pilots are not hard to find. Longevity is what makes a pilot group expensive. If Delta hires all guys in there 30's pay roll is going to be expensive for a long time.
Age doesn't come into play with pilot costs unless guys are upgrading in less years than the top pay scale. So at Delta it doesn't matter because nobody is upgrading in less than 12 years.
I follow your logic, but when a Delta guy retires they are replaced by another who gets paid just the same although eventually a newhire at the bottom of the payscale will be reqired. There is some cost savings in that, but it really only becomes significant enough to outweigh the costs of recruiting and training if the retiring guy is replaced with a lower paid guy.
There are guys who look at this and it can be significant in the regional world. They call it the juniority effect and it does save lots of money at places that have fast upgrades. If you can retire a guy who is on 8 year captain pay and replace them with someone on 2 year captain pay then it's huge. This is one reason why stagnation at regionals has caused pilot costs to rise to a point that alot of the cost savings at regionals is no longer there.