Originally Posted by
MarkVI
Strongly disagree. This response reeks of enitlement and a lack of understanding in business and compensation practices amongst various industries.
1.) Aviation is comperable to other skilled professions. Go live on a medical intern or resident salary and tell me how you feel. You're flying a smaller plane, doing most of the scut work, getting your ass kicked by awful schedules. Cry me a river -- EVERY skilled career, be it a doctor, lawyer, or airline pilot starts out at the bottom of the compensation ladder with the worst quality of life. Stop acting like aviation is somehow more sacred than the intern prescribing your grandmothers medicine. How many hours has that intern worked, how many orders have they filled, and how many reports do they have to write for their resident? And what's their compensation?
Airline pilots have it the best we've had it in a long time, and I'm making more than my friend whos in his residency. I'm home more (and I commute). I have more free time. You arbitrarily throw out $150K as the base starting for an airline pilot, but the truth is if you got that you'd still complain. You're stuck on the hedonic treadmill, plain and simple.
2.) OR, and hear me out on this, bad word of mouth spreads based on a video. That word of mouth leads to a loss of pilots, which causes CCF to skyrocket, which in turn leads to a loss of flying when AA realizes we can't staff our routes. So, rather than providing better compensation, AA (who's in fiscal turmoil as it is) decides to start pinching pennies, and all the sudden that magical quality of life you're looking for gets further away. There's always at least two paths every story can go down. Just because you have the lofty idea that the idealistic and altruistic executives in Dallas will realize they need to float cash to PSA to solve the problem doesn't mean that's what they'll do.
The truth is, if ananyone is at fault for the poor QOL and pay, it's the pilot group. WE elected our respresentation, ratified a contract, and told the airline in black ink on paper "these are our expectations, and this is how long we expect it for."
Them's the games of being part of a union. If you don't like the situation you're in, I strongly suggest you think more clearly about who you intend to elect next.
Funny you don’t think passengers should pay more for tickets due to higher cost of AAG doing business and due PRIMARILY to higher fuel prices. Record profits last year! Airline still highly profitable vs many years ago!
AAG culture is trending towards a business model of AmericanWest, Spirit, and other LLC vs a mainline premium carrier it seems. Great get some basic economy fares, great make the bathroom smaller to squeeze more seats and less leg room. Still record profits last year, very profitable this year as well.
AAG made the decision to return $3 Billion over the next few yrs to shareholders.
Pilots are not to blame for the current industry issues & request for more! Mainline business practices caused it. Passengers are paying less than what tickets should be worth, and government & Airport agencies are hiding additional costs /taxes (PFC) into tickets. Airlines are fighting to leverage just $1-$5 in ticket prices and/or ancillary fees to remain competitive with passenger growth and demands
Pilots are not the problem! Hell, Pilots are coming into this 121 Regional industry only because wages finally were raised above poverty level! Regionals are flying more and more jets and advances jets and carrying more passengers further, faster, and higher than 20years ago!
Without Pilots no growth! Pay pilots what industry wages demand (Republic & Endeavor) and respective QOL). Growth will come if the right bases are offered, they will come. Staff training department and reduce training backlog and they will come.