My airline has about 3100 pilots. Lets say that we want a $5 raise across the board (every pilot gets an extra $5 per hour for the year). Now just for arguement's sake, we will say that the average pilot earns 1,000 hours of pay credit hours per year. So each pilot earns an extra 5,000 a year. 5000 X 3100 pilots = $15.5 million. My airline generates over $1 billion in revenue per year. So for a pilot to get a $5 pay rasie it will only cost the company an extra 1.5% of the yearly revenue, which many companies spend more than 1.5% on executive bonuses. The money is out there, we just have to be smarter when negotiations come up. We have to go against the grain and give the bigger raises the the junior guys first before we raise the 8 yr CA pay, we must stop the trend of screwing the junior pilots to benefit the few senior guys (esp at a regional because most pilots do not want to retire at the regional level). Do not be fooled when management says they can't pay you, it is a lie. The airline can be just as cheap to operate with higher pilot salaries. Gordon Bethune was once quoted in a CAL crewroom when asked why pilot salaries were so low: "They are low because you don't make me pay you more, if you guys made me pay you more I would and could, but you don't negotiate it." Do some research on why salaries got to be so high in the first place back in the 60s and 70s and compare those pilot groups to the ones today. Those guys would have kicked our a$$ (literally) if they saw our payrates and work rules today.