Originally Posted by
followingdreams
So this is where I disagree, if you really want to make salaries to be a "more even field", the way to do that is to make salary consistant and no FDP. That would be a negative for the company since if the economy turns, they are only on the hook for salaires. I dont understand that IF FDP is so unfair, A. Why did the Union agree to it in the first place and B. Why would you want it to continue? Im a believer that if a company is going to be paying a lower salary, then the ability to make more money should be there when times are good. The pilots are taking on some risk (as is the company), if times are good everyone is making WAY more money than competitors (due to the risk), if you get a straight salary (or day rate), its a guarantee and should be less since now the risk is passed to the company.
The company tried for FDP in 2015 and was rejected. We accepted in 2018 and again in 2020 when they offered it up and then added more money to it when we were looking at it as free money since it was the company that came to us to negotiate years early. The variability was within reason until things cranked up in 2021 and various fleets started flying much more than others. The XLS and Sovereign fleets are just super old and break a lot. The Phenoms went through a lot of overhauls last year which kept many down and effectively overstaffed the fleet until they came back on line. The Longitudes had some mx issues that slowed them down for a while. Now the Lattitudes are going down in big numbers while in need of engine fan blades for the engines that are in need of overhaul. This at least temporarily overstaffed some fleets and causes more wide swings in earnings.
The company always wanted the FDP to keep the metal moving and since the union insisted on everyone getting the same rate, this makes it possible for junior pilots to crank up their pay. If we were to go straight salary, the metal wouldn't move as smoothly and the junior pilots would all leave and the company wouldn't be able to hire. We are going for big salary gains, but salary would likely have to go up over 75% to make up for the lack of FDP for junior pilots and that wouldn't even bring the average overall pay for junior pilots up much, if at all. The camels nose is under the tent so the best we can do is try to minimize the overall percentage of pay that the FDP provides and also even it out a bit while concentrating the gains on salary. The fight to crank it up will be exceedingly hard, but to drop FDP and then replace it all and greatly improve overall pay will simply not happen no matter how much we want it. Personally, I would prefer the hourly FDP go down to something like $50 an hour and start at zero hours flown. This would still incentivize moving metal while also making FDP more evenly distributed and a much lower percentage of salary. I'm sure that won't happen, but hopefully there will be some fixes made.