Originally Posted by
⌐ AV8OR WANNABE
What would you have done? Increased pay rates?
We could do that but only if we re-regulated the industry again... Even the current "Let-the-government-run-everything" administration won't touch it, it ain't gonna happen...
So the only thing they can do is to give us more time to rest (in the works) but that's not going to make a huge impact on commuting... The other thing they can do is to force airline employees to be within an hour or so of the airport 12 hours or so before their trip... They can't force people where to live but they can force people to "get plenty of rest" before a trip - in effect, making commuting very hard...
We need to be careful what we're wishing for.
I'm a pilot not a legislator. I trust they'd be better at making those types of decisions, but I wouldn't let those clowns fly my plane.
That said, I support full regulation in the form of pay/rest/hotel requirements - OR - Full deregulation in the form of a removal of the RLA which would allow us to effectively protest poor working conditions. Its like a big red cell off your nose, you can go left or right, but going straight is certainly not going to result in a favorable outcome.
The current model however favors only management's interests and is designed to reduce labor costs driving down costs for the consumer. The only way you prevent crew members from sleeping in crew rooms is to provide hotels for them. Raising wages doesn't solve the problem, providing the rooms does a much better job.
In aviation
safety should be first, but
money first is the status-quo.