Originally Posted by
todd1200
How many books have been written on how Sun Tzu applies to business/management? Also, I don't think ClickClickBoom is talking about labor vs. management (he/she said asked "what would happen if airline "A" decided to take airline "B"s market share?") so in the scenario it would be United vs. Delta.
Below is a quick excerpt from a book on Sun Tzu, would any of these apply to the airline business?
(1) Capture your market without destroying it or its profitability.
(2) Attack competitors where and when they least expect it and are most vulnerable.
(3) Make the best use of market information to develop advantages.
(4) Move faster than your competitor to create maximum confusion and delay in response.
(5) Pick strategies that will encourage your competitors to respond in ways favorable to you.
(6) Emphasize leadership built upon good character.
This, is what I am alluding to. Pilots are egocentric and often myopic, this causes them to miss the bigger picture. UAL, DAL et al, exist for one reason, to move people from a to b for money. More market share, usually means more money. Regional, mainline is a moot question, those concepts are a labor component. Regionals came in to existence when pilots were oozing out the cracks and B,C, and D(regionals) scales were created to utilize cheap labor, today not so many pilots, so maintaining/retaining your skilled machine operators will become critical. They want pilots to think that a job at the majors is the ultimate brass ring, when in reality, it's becoming the opposite, crap work rules, crap schedules and spending a large portion of your life in a stanky, smelly plane full of walmart shoppers isn't all it's cracked up to be. Add staying in the same hotel as the herd that they just delivered, means that the job isn't really the brass ring they thought it was. All this means that the majors have issues, personnel is the largest looming on the horizon. Just a couple of years ago, the average Airline pilots age was 48 years, an aging workforce, coupled with an extremely high cost to qualify for admittance means there are looming issues. The airline that cracks that code will succeed at the expense of the remaining competitors.
Make no mistake, for the most part, every pilot that wants to fly cattle cars in the sky is doing it, those that say "if the pay was higher, I'd be there in a second" are kidding themselves, because even if this job paid them the same as the one they have filling out TPS reports, there is the issue of QOL, spending a large portion of your month away from your family has higher costs than money alone can compensate for.
The industry will have to move back towards 20 days off a month, and 150k+ average pay before the job becomes attractive again and that ain't happening anytime soon.
The paradigm has truly shifted and the airlines are 3 generations deep in the "way we do things" mentality.
With the consolidation that has occurred, there will not be the ability to acquire skilled machine operators, by acquisition or merger, since there will only be 3 players, let the bidding wars begin. Make no mistake, we are all mercenaries, cash rules the roost, corporate loyalty is dead, we have more loyalty to our college sports teams, the chit show is just warming up.
This won't be immediate, but will morph over time....