Originally Posted by
Larry in TN
It may be a terrible system but it's the best one anyone's been able to come up with so far.
Actually there are many other ways it's done but the seniority system as it's implemented in the airline industry is unique to this industry. Many airlines outside the US operate on very different systems. Just about every other industry operates differently as well.
Seniority protects Captain's authority as management can't use a pilot's willingness to cut corners as a gauge for promotion. With seniority a Captain can stand up and say no to an operation that he doesn't believe is safe without fear of it affecting his career advancement. See "Flying The Line" for the story of how this developed.
This is a myth! Seniority doesn't protect a captain, it imprisons him. Regulations and professional conduct as well as the airline's desire to be safe are what protect the captain. Without seniority the captain could have the option to resign and go work for the competition but with seniority he is imprisoned in his job and bound to the company short of starting his career over at the bottom of a different seniority list. This is even more true if the company happens to be one of the more desirable places to work.
If a captain is a trouble maker, barely passes his checks, uses sick days like vacation days and disrupts the airline do you really believe he should be promoted?
The airline, like any business, wants compensation to be proportional to production.
No...they want the lowest labor costs the market will allow for the quality of labor they are seeking.
Management also wants the pay system to provide incentive for the existing employees to voluntarily produce more as that allows them to operate with fewer crewmembers which lowers overall labor cost. The current system provides that incentive.
Nothing wrong with that. But that's a separate issue. Skywest's specific duty rigs aren't really the question. I'm talking more about the industry in general.
CASM is always significantly higher in a small jet than in the larger mainline jets. Three or four times higher.
No, it depends on the stage length and on the passenger loads and the schedule distribution. The idea is to provide a steady feed to the hubs or frequent service between smaller markets that are close together.
The smaller jets are used to keep the yield high on routes which can't support higher yields with higher capacities. If the airplane used is too big the airline has to offer too many seats at too low a price driving down the yield. With the smaller jet you eliminate most, if not all, of the cheapest fares and dramatically reduce the number of cheaper fares that are offered. The result is a much higher yield for the flight which overcomes the aircraft's high CASM.
Right.
It is very common in many industries to find that the more productive employees are paid higher than the less productive employees. A pilot who flies a larger airplane is producing more ASMs per hour of flight than one who flies a smaller airplane. The airline can sell those ASMs to produce more RSMs which means more revenue.
Also right but it doesn't mean that the pilot of a 300 passenger jet should make $300K while the pilot of a 50 passenger jet should make $50K. What about those 500 passenger jets?
As you said there are many more factors and the cost of the pilots and other fixed overhead (gate fees, slots, etc) along with the specific costs for the equipment (which varies as discussed) doesn't mean that a smaller jet must pay pilots crap wages to be profitable. Otherwise we'd just use heavy jets on every route but less frequently.
Bottom line is that the smallest airplanes don't produce enough product, which leads to not enough revenue, to support significantly higher pay for the crew. The larger airplanes produce more product and revenue which allows the higher pay which had been negotiated over the decades.
Except that mainline used to fly those smaller jets before the regional jet existed and they paid their pilots far better. When airlines aimed for load factors in the 60-70% range to be profitable and used 90 passenger jets on those routes it's not all that different from using a 50-70 seat jet and filling all the available seats as they do today.
In the end you're just rationalizing lower pay. The real issue should be that pilots should be paid what the free market would allow rather than these artificial limits imposed by management and the unions designed solely to keep labor costs down. If a jet isn't profitable then the airline shouldn't operate it. There's a reason all those 50 seaters got built in the first place.