Seniority list sim instructors do not give IOE, do they? I know they did at NWA, but that was then, this is now. Many of our sim instructors now are retired pilots, so staffing them won't affect the number of pilots required to fly the schedule. The ones who are line pilots, are mostly F/O's and are required to fly one month out of three.

The guys who give IOE are line Captains, i.e. Line Check Airmen. Their staffing may go up with more movement, or down with less movement that pay banding would supposedly bring.

My biggest fear when it comes to pay banding is, we are going to de-couple our pay from productivity. I think we should be pushing in the other direction. I think we should be pushing to un-band the bands we already have.

We should be demanding pay relative to the seats on board. The 747 should pay a lot more than the 777, and the A330 should pay more than the 764. ALPA National should have a minimum rate, per seat, for crew pay. The rest becomes simple math.

Throw that in RA's lap and see what happens.

Every time the company wants something, a lot of clowns run around with their hair on fire trying to figure out how we can give it to them. I say flip it around on them. Tell them, "No, this is what it's going to cost you, per seat, to fly people around. What airplanes you buy is up to you, but just because you bought 9 different fleets, doesn't make it my problem when it comes to training pilots to fly them all."

OR...you can PAY US to NOT go to training. They already have a Training Bypass Pay option, where if they want you to stay put, they simply pay you the higher rate of what you could have bid, to remain on your present equipment.

Pay banding is management's wet dream, that some of you are trying to justify giving it to them scares the crap out of me...