Originally Posted by
TheManager
I will agree and disagree as well.
Agreed with the statement management wants to make to the Street.
However, if I had time I'd research this little fact, as gruesome as it might be, yet illustrative. (Headed back to the salt mine.)
How much did BHM cost UPS in payouts?
What about that unfortunate and hard to watch MD11 crash in NRT?
Or perhaps the incident that destroyed the MD10? In MEM?
How much did the last major airline crash with significant fatalities of passengers cost in payouts? Thankfully, and knock on wood, we haven't had one in awhile. Might have to extrapolate data from perhaps 191 and adjust it to today's dollars.
This week in Bloomberg Business week, I know, lots of "studying" going on to "stay awake"
the department of transportation has put a figure on human life at $9.3 million per I believe. Part of the GM ignition key debate going on.
I think your are taking that to too much of an extreme. And sorry, but I don't buy the whole responsibility for XX number of lives as making any one pilots' job "worth" more than another's. Sorry, I just don't. Carl might think he is more important then you or me, but the AJC will still use the same font for it's headline if you or I bend metal. So using that as a metric for determining pay... again... imho.. is pure folly and short sighted. Or maybe we should be paid for the number of people that are actually on the airplane if the responsibility for human lives is how you think we should be paid. I think the MD88 would go amazingly senior if that were the case. I think the point of a UPS/FDX comparison as far as management is concerned is from a business perspective in terms of profitability and excellence of those businesses. I think management is tired of the constant cyclical swings of this industry and are really working hard to break that cycle. Consolidation has helped immensely. The fees of which you speak are also a method to do that. As an added bonus it gets the gubbamint out of our wallet. IMHO, kudos for that.