Riddler

Just read it and think about it before throwing spears...

There's no shortage of crisis in the airline industry, no matter where or what you fly - from regionals to the majors, FedEx, UPS, and Southwest included.

Political (9/11, Open Skies) and economic (name your favorite bursted bubble) factors have forced airline managers to create new ways of finding revenue. Unfortunately for the pilots involved, revenue streams come in the forms of concessionary contracts, deplorable working conditions, shady joint ventures, mergers, furloughs, and mass outsourcing of jobs.

Pilots and unions have been part of the problem. Don't get me wrong - I'm a staunch unionist, and in fact my other civilian job (after my CAL furlough) is about to unionize.

Here's the problem: pilots continually fight for senority, assuming that everything else will fall in place as a result of senority (pay, schedule, equipment, etc. Unfortuantely this gives management a distinct advantage: they KNOW that senior pilots can't quit (unlike CEOs who jump from job to job with reckless abandon for anything other than their bonus checks). Management KNOWS that senior pilots and junior pilots often have competing agendas. Management KNOWS that regional pilots and mainline pilots have competing agendas. And they've played us against each other for years.

Here's the solution. ALPA needs to standardize PAY, and make PAY "portable" such that a 10 year 737 FO gets paid the same at every airline. If that FO decides to leave for another airline, then he or she still gets 10th year 737 FO pay.

Senority is a different matter and should not be portable. If that 10 year FO moves to a different airline - for whatever reason (voluntary, merger, bankruptcy of previous airline), then that person gets stapled to the bottom of the new senoirty list. So he might be on reserve, and maybe at an undesirable domicile, but his pay is protected because he is a UNION 737 pilot. Upgrade, schedule, domicile, etc. would still be a factor of senority.

What does this do? It gives LABOR some much needed nation-wide muscle. It would make pilot pay independent of oil prices and poor management decisions so that management - not pilots - accountable for management's shortsightedness.

It wouldn't be easy and there's undoubtedly a lot of problems -- how to you determine when "Year 1" starts - is it your first 121/135 date of hire, your ATP date, your military pilot training graduation date, etc.

I think it's worthwhile for ALPA, APA, USAPA, SWAPA, etc. to start thinking about how this industry will look 10 or 20 years from now.

OK, flame away!