Originally Posted by Herkflyr

I'm not sure that I entirely agree with you. Telling guys "you can't be productive so we can hire a kid still in middle-school twenty years from now" is a vestige of a tired era where you had an entire generation of narcissistic copilots who would deliberately bid the same schedules as LCAs, all so they could get paid for NOT working.

When LCA's are doing OE, a pilot is going to be displaced from his normal line through no fault of his own. Somebody is going to get screwed. In the old days, it was the company. Now it is the pilot being displaced. I like the old days better.

Hey, I want to pay $500 for a brand new Lincoln Navigator...but then I realize I have to also live in the real world.

I personally don't like flying a lot of hours, but so long as we don't have guys furloughed (which changes the discussion) AND have great pay and work rules for the trips that we do fly (which we also don't have now, at least on the pay side), guys should be able to pick up more time if they wish. Mandating inefficiency never creates "jobs"--it is merely feather-bedding that gives the illusion of creating jobs, all the while contributing to an increasingly unprofitable enterprise that puts into jeopardy ALL the jobs in the first place.

The problem with not mandating inefficiency is that there are pilots who will fly as much as possible no matter how much money they make. The company starts to expect everybody to fly this much. Then will try to bring wages down. We are our own worst enemy. We need protections from ourselves.

The cap/ALV is a good tool for initially creating schedules in PBS/Lines of Time. Not having it during the initial schedule creation would create chaos. That said, after the initial schedules are built, then guys who want to should be able to pick up as much time as they wish.

Look at it the other way. Why don't we make the cap 20 hours? Think of all the "jobs!" we could create. How about a cap of...zero?...Mathematically, the entire universe could be on the DAL seniority list and we still wouldn't have enough pilots. Think about your career progression then!...oh wait, that wouldn't work.

Now you're being a little extreme.


So...somewhere between a cap of zero and the entire universe on the seniority list, and a no cap, let's-waive-all-contractual rules and FARs and all fly until we collapse in the cockpit, is the happy medium.

I just think that that happy medium should allow those who want to fly more the ability to do so, while not mandating it for those of us who don't want to. Seat progression and the rest is wonderful--so long as it is based on a thriving, profitable company. "Featherbedding" and telling guys who want to be productive that they cannot be all in the name of some theoretical job that the company's financials don't warrant, is ultimately a losing proposition.