Originally Posted by
Carl Spackler
But that's not what happens at SWA. Hourly pay rates are not an apples to apples comparison because life as an airline pilot is about pay based on the number of working days required to achieve that pay. It's also important to understand pay hours versus working hours, AKA work rules.
SWAPA has much better work rules than us allowing for much greater pay hours in a day than Delta. If its easy to make 7 or 8 hours of pay per day for only flying 4 or 5 hours per day at SWA, while there's almost no way to do that at Delta, you begin to see that pay rates are only part of the equation.
A far more important fact however is one you've continually ignored despite my discussing it in a number posts. Specifically, even though pay rates do not tell the whole story, even looking at rates alone shows us that the SWAPA pay rate applies to every aircraft in their fleet. That SWAPA pay rate alone is higher than every aircraft in the Delta fleet except for 87 aircraft. The other 635 aircraft at Delta have lower pay rates than SWAPA. That's not counting SWAPA's much greater pay per day capability than Delta pilots, it's just comparing the pay rates only. This makes the lower pay rates on the 635 aircraft at Delta feel even worse to those Delta pilots who fly those lower paying 635 aircraft.
SWAPA leads our industry in pay, work rules and scope. SWAPA is an independent union. That's a fact. The only way you can possibly twist it any other way is to crow about the higher pay rate on 87 out of 722 Delta aircraft.
Carl
Carl, Having lived in the DFW area for many years and having many SW friends I actually agree in principle to what you just wrote. However: you fail to mention they are more productive than DL, part of that being one type of jet, point to point business plan vs hub and spoke but the main one is their ability to pick up to max FAR's and most of them do it so they get by with 10% on reserve. OBTW their reserves work most of their on call days. I'm sure DL mgmt would gladly pay us more if DALPA would agree to unlimited open time pick up but I don't think the majority of DL pilots junior to us would care for it.
I guess what I'm saying is SWAPA has some good things and some not so good things. Remember what they do have they got through constructive engagement. When Herb retired SWAPA bought him a Harley, can you see DL pilots doing that for Richard ? Hell, he makes so much money he should buy us Harleys when he retires.