Originally Posted by
Std Deviation
Been out with the flu...
I NEVER said we make too much money. I’m merely a student of human behavior. I pontificate on my observations. I don’t see a group of doctors at Baylor shouting that the docs at Parkland make more. A group of accountants at Deloitte squawking that those dogs over at Ernst and Young are getting bigger profit sharing. Different companies. Apples to Oranges. Like JB and Delta. How many pilots does Delta have again? Aircraft? It seems everyone hired here prior to 3 years ago willingly came to work for a non union carrier, no?
I find the concept “industry average” laughable. Unless you’re a socialist. Do our flight attendants, rampers, and dispatchers get industry average? How about our CEO? Does he get it? Okay, so only the pilots should get it? Because we pay “industry average” for gates and fuel. Uh, okay.
I said we’re going to end up right in the middle. Between “industry average” and where we are now. I asked if we’re willing to burn the house down for $20K.
I’m a reasonable middle of the road guy that’s actually signed the front of a paycheck and not the back.
So let me paraphrase, “we want more money because the guys over there get more money even though our companies are totally different and we were fully cognizant of the pay at the time but damn my Delta neighbor got a new boat with his profit sharing so I want what he has.”
So welfare then? We want a handout? Have this conversation with someone outside of aviation and watch their head explode.
Again, NEVER EVER Said we were overpaid.
Not a Glover or a juicer. Watching the rhetoric on both sides and along for the ride.
Whole-E-Sheet. Again with the Delta has more planes and pilots!
Learn:
Very disappointing post STD.
Your argument for not getting DL rates (DL, UAL and AA are all virtually identical) seems to be:
1. They have more pilots.
2. They have a higher market cap, in other words the total value of the company is higher.
As for more pilots, who cares? All that guarantees is they have more paychecks to write at that higher rate! It doesn't guarantee any other meaningful metric at all. They could be larger, yet still be a money losing enterprise!
As for market cap value, they are much larger corporations, and they are profitable, so it's not unusual that the big 3 have higher total market values. Market capitalization also fluctuates from one quarterly stock report to the next as Spirit and United have shown us recently. What does that matter? Those things aren't really relevant because they don't adjust for the scale of the operation. To say it another way, that metric alone doesn't provide enough information to gauge how profitable an enterprise is relative to it's size.
Profit margin, or how much profit we earn relative to each dollar of corporate revenue is a much more meaningful way to compare corporate profitability because it adjusts for scale, or at least it can show how smaller companies can be more profitable than a larger company relative to our size. That's us!
We earn more profit per dollar of revenue than the big 3. In the case of UAL and AA, a LOT more. We trade "highest margin" back and forth with SWA.
We can afford and should expect compensation in line with the big 4. And we have 1/4 the number of pilot paychecks to write at that comparable pay rate. You see, scale adjusted!