Below is an example of how much higher our rates need to be to simply match DL's current 10-yr career compensation based on their earliest available upgrade. As of April 2023, upgrades are being awarded at less than one year at DL to the 7ER in both
ATL and
NYC. From what I understand, upgrade via the lance program was awarded at 6 yrs, 10 months on the latest vacancy bid at SWA.
The point of showing the below chart is that our rates need to come up dramatically in order to even match Delta's current 10-year career compensation. If Delta's rates get me-too'ed when UA and AA get their new contracts, then our rates would need to come up even more than shown to achieve parity. Of course, if we only match Delta's rates, we are still flying 30% more block hours than Delta pilots on average, so there would be no reward for SWA pilots relative to Delta for the extra liability and risk we shoulder. And note that even with these dramatically higher rates, SWA is still behind a DL pilot from the end of year 1 through year 9.
The current SWA 12-year captain rate is $245.64/TFP. So, in this scenario, achieving $350/TFP at DOS would require a 42.5% initial increase. Then, getting to $471/TFP by DOS + 3 years would require subsequent raises of 11.5%, 10.3%, and 9.4% each year (an increase of $40.33/TFP for 12-yr CA rate each year) for a 91.7% total raise by DOS + 3 years.
And finally, this chart only addresses rates. Rates are an important part of a contract, but hardly the only important variable that needs to be addressed. We are currently lagging the industry in many other very important contractual areas like retirement, work rules, and disability. It all needs to get fixed. There will very likely not be another opportunity like we have right now to fix the contract for the next several decades.
