Originally Posted by
dracir1
This highlights a DIFFERENT problem. Regional pilots shouldn't be paid less. That's a whole nother debate.
But directly to your question, hiring should be set up where an airline could hire another CA and start them at 1st year CA pay. The benefit for the hiring airline is obvious - they'd get a much more experienced CA at 1st year pay with less initial training costs (vs. paying an upgrading FO who'd be receiving 2+ CA yr pay).
This is how the rest of the business world works. Ask any lawyer, doctor, etc.
To circumvent (if necessary), it would be easy enough to ensure in-house upgrades happened. Simply put a "minimum" percentage of in-house space for FOs for each class in the CBA. If there's an upgrade class of 30 pilots - the company would need to upgrade say 80% from the FO ranks (allowing 20% off the street CA hires). Similar to a flow (for hiring) - just for upgrades.
Why not?
This is scary. We've been operating this way for so long, we can't even fathom or recognize that there might be a better way.
I actually worked with some of that "better" system for almost a decade abroad. Spoiler: it is not better. At least in my opinion. You already opened another can with:"
experienced CA at 1st year pay with less initial training costs (vs. paying an upgrading FO who'd be receiving 2+ CA yr pay" . Now you have created an incentive for the company to hire from the outside before upgrading from within... "
Simply put a "minimum" percentage of in-house space". So who decides on those percentages? Nothing simple about it. . And saying regional pilots should not be paid less suggest that you think WB pilots should not be paid more... Do you really think the majority of the pilots want no pay differentiation? Hint: experienced lawyers and surgeons make more than rookies. It isn't scary, it is impractical, and will not make things better. And again, I say that as someone who just started over at the bottom.
There is plenty things we should be changing before we even try to touch this. Here is a few:
- After the amendable date for the contract passes, pay rates should automatically be raised every year by COLA+1% (SWA gets some of that, why isn't ALPA pushing for this??)
- Hourly pay should start at scheduled departure time -30 minutes and end at the later of scheduled or actual arrival +15 minutes. Get paid for when you are actually working.