Originally Posted by
Excargodog
People at NK have been saying that for over four years. It hasn’t budged management an inch. And why should it? NK isn’t losing many senior CAs - except to retirement.
The people they are losing - junior CAs who will spend a long time on reserve and FOs are easily replaced as long as new hire classes remain full, replaced by FOs costing them about $50 K that first year and by upgrading FOs with less longevity than those CAs departing. It’s a net decrease in payroll for management.
And management gets to keep the unvested parts of the 401k of those departing. Management is coming out ahead on the deal.
Where is the ‘leverage’ in that?
Cinquo and a few others have been advocating this “strategy” for four plus years, and it hasn’t worked yet. It is the equivalent of bringing in cheap labor to replace the people quitting, negating the leverage of attrition. Why would management raise everyone’s wages to avoid doing that? What other airlines are successfully implementing this policy? Or have implemented this policy? Where has it ever worked?
How long will it have to not work before you’ll be convinced it isn’t going to work?
It wasn’t a critical issue over the last 4 years. Remember CovID?
Classes are not full. There are quite a few no shows each class. That’s facts.
Things also were not at critical mass yet in the timeline. We have been constantly increasing training capacity to handle attrition. Remember doing anything but giving the pilots raises is managements goal so that’s what they have been trying to accomplish. They are currently maxed on training. Now have no shows in class. Now have less applications bc of massive pay increases at regionals. Most importantly combined with all of that, deliveries that were delayed during covid are arriving quickly.
Management may be covering attrition and even a little growth but they are covering it with vastly lower experience which carries its own set of other issues. They however are not covering the amount of growth for the increased rate of deliveries. Lower attrition would allow that training capacity to be used for growth which is what they need. If they solve that problem alone they don’t have any more problems and can stall until a JCBA and they are cashing their golden parachutes.
Ask yourself how much flying we do today compared to pre CovID and ask yourself how many airplanes we currently are operating compared to pre CovID. Ask yourself if what we have today for utilization is what management wants and why higher aircraft utilization is not happening. Also ask yourself how much utilization factors into spirits ability to become and stay profitable.
You haven’t got a clue if you think simply replacing pilots leaving with low cost new hires is something management is ok with and also happy with. Go get a clue.