Originally Posted by
skywatch
Problem is, a better analogy would be "why pay my son $20 per week when I could pay the neighbor $10 a week to do the same job..." That is a better representation of the issue Delta has...that being said, I agree that you should keep as much in house as you can, because there are advantages to that beyond simple cost per block hour, much like there are long term advantages to paying your own son, even if it cheaper to pay the neighbor in the short term.
But the point of my post is to point out that your analogy is inaccurate.
Difference between crew costs for airlines are not the issue. The differences are like 3-8 bucks an hour. If the knuckleheads that tried to recall our reps last year had their way we would be working for less. They wanted to take pay cuts to preserve jobs, lot of good that has done here.