Originally Posted by
Starcheck102
I think that's a stretch, at best.
RA has stated publicly on many occasions that he hates four-engine gas guzzlers. Everyone knows that the 747s are going away, the only question was "when," and apparently it's sooner than Crew Scheduling was able to reckon. The FLTOPS comms reveal something about corporate structure. Or lack of it. They probably spent all day Monday re-running the bid after the brass finally let them in on the fact that eight 747A awards were no longer valid. FLTOPS is still on the clothesline.
Sloppy. Disorganized.
The only people talking about pay banding and freezes are in C20. We need pay solutions that reflect the new reality that pensions are gone, so the importance of FAE is zero, and pilots need to have more money earlier in their careers for retirement investments. We need to front-load our compensation.
Profit sharing is always for sale, but bring your checkbook.
Anyone daft enough to accept the concept that the limiting factor on fleet choices was pilot pay should probably check his plumbing for lead pipes. A deal is a deal, but the answer to every ultimatum is "no."
I agree with that in general. One of the best single things we and other airlines can do is to continue to phase out the cancer we colloquially accept as "first year pay". First year pay should be a percent or two below second year pay, and second year pay should be a percent or two below third year pay.
This gives a one time "disproportionate raise" to first and second year pilots, but removes a huge amount of leverage from airline managements going forward. Our current "pay your dues, son!" approach only weakens us in the long run. We also need to fight to keep max scale at 12 years and vigorously avoid pro-management schemes to have higher scales.
We (all) also need to work towards preferential hiring for distressed legacy pilots. The next time a large pilot group is faced with a "vote concession or else" they will face considerably less pressure to acquiesce under duress knowing they can always "start over" at 6 figures.
That is only part of the solution of course. We also need to stop the cancer of living paycheck to paycheck at 150-250K for any reason. That weakens us severely and heavily predjudices us to settle for less to keep what we have.
All of those things will require a significant philosophical shift across airlines over time and won't happen overnight. But we have to start somewhere.