Originally Posted by
Fly Boy Knight
All employees get paid a minimum guarantee, optional health insurance, retirement matching, profit sharing (after first year), etc. I think just adding more bodies to the payroll makes it more expensive than to just pay fewer people a little more money to cover the same amount of work. Their benefits, health insurance, etc. remains the same. The only extra cost is their extra pay so I dunno. In my head, it seems as though paying fewer people a little more money to cover extra work would be cheaper than properly staffing, even if they are all first year captains.
Up to a point. Volunteers to cover extra work are plentiful when lines are thin, but if everyone is loaded up to begin with then the volunteers start to dry up (no involuntary junior man at SKW). And of course unlike most industries, the FARs legally cap how much we can work.
I suspect SKW envisions a real shortage of ATP's at the regional entry if/when the majors start retiring people...they may be willing to pay folks to sit around now (they are certainly doing that in my base) rather than lose flying due to lack of staff later.