Originally Posted by
Fegelein
You want DHL to pay SAI more money so you can get paid like a FedEx or UPS pilot? Get your union to get SAI management to pay you more. Either SAI will have to take a hit in lesser profits or they will have to beg DHL to renegotiate the ACMI agreement so SAI's profit margin can stay the same while paying you more.
All the while NAC is in the ear of DHL whispering we can do it cheaper and we can start the process of getting a 777 on our certificate.
Yes, yes, yes.
And we do that by setting expectations. I am a 777 pilot. 777 pilots get paid $xxx to fly the airplane. I am a member of the 777 community. We are peers. They (FedEx 777 pilots) are better compensated than me. Much. There is no inherent reason they should be. Asserting the expectation that a pilot with a yellow-tailed airplane does the same work as a pilot with a purple-tailed airplane and should be compensated as such is the starting point. You never get to that point if you say they are better than us and deserve more. You never get to that point if you say we are not the same because of historical factors that no longer apply to the job we are dong today. You never get to that point if you give up before you even start.
DLH doesn't need cheaper out of SAI, they need better. And if NAC can convince DHL that they can do it better as well as cheaper, and can scale their performance as they scale their fleet, while Southern can not, then NAC ought to get the contract, and put Southern right out of business. But if they can't treat their crews better than Southern does, which wouldn't be hard, they won't have better performance than SAI. Gordon Bethune once famously quipped, "You can make a pizza so cheaply no one will eat it." SAI is a pizza no one wants to eat, not the crews, and if they can't man the planes, not the customer.