Originally Posted by
FXLAX
I’m not sure what you mean by 20% of SWA passengers?
As for outsourcing costs, the training facility is maxed out. They put an MD10 sim in the falcon building a couple of years ago to make room for one more Boeing sim. And then they decided not to spend the capital to expand training facilities. We have 5000 pilots and trying to hire another 2000 in the next couple of years. Pretty soon after that we may be the size of the SWA pilot group. Guess how much SWA paid for their facilities in order to train that many pilots versus just outsourcing? So it’s not just incremental costs for the next pilot hired. It’s the cost of building another couple dozen sim bays and simulators and all associated infrastructure. Of course that is more expensive than the next new hire class plus penalty payments. So should we feel ok that they outsource a few of our jobs in the past and some more now to temporarily save on capital expenditures or are they done with those expenditures and hence the reason why they opened up scope in negotiations?
Many airlines utilize Boeing and Airbus training centers while using their own instructors or even rent sim space from other airlines if it’s available another option would be the many sim facilities like Flight Safety, Pan Am, CAE, etc. The simulators might not be accurate to our cockpits but we could use them for the type rating and then use our sims for a short differences course.
That would allow far more people to be trained without expanding our training center beyond what is absolutely necessary.
Bottom line, FedEx has options to increase internal staffing and did not need to outsource 2 Atlas B747’s long term.