Thanks for the detailed post. Not many of us ever take the time to post such a detailed point of view, especially with graphs to support an argument. Usually responses are one or two sentence sarcastic comments.

The only things I would point out in response to your post is:

1) Skywest pilots already get a pay raise every 1 year anniversary of their hire date. Your data does not account for these annual raises. I don't really care to argue semantics over what the word "raise" means. But suffice it to say, my paycheck gets bigger every twelve months regardless of whether we agree to take 1% more from management.

2) Skywest is a non-union, non-ALPO, airline. Management has NO contract with us, and we have NO contract with management. We are free to "accept" the 1% offered today by management, and we can go back and start knocking on their door for more money tomorrow. We are not locked-in to anything. We are not foregoing a turn around in the economy next month or next year. The other pilot groups that agree to 5 or 7 year deals are locking themselves in - we are not.

3) There are very few service industries where providers in those markets can continually, annually, raise their prices to consumers by an appropriate CPI percentage to accommodate contractually agreed increased labor expenses. In the airline business 2 or 3% margins are the difference between success and failure.

If you can get airline consumers to agree to a 1.2% ticket price increase today, with a 3-4% increase year after year going into the future, I vote for you and Pedro for President and Vice-President.

Boiler . . . thanks for the clarification on the ALPO dues, but in my opinion, 1.95% is still too much by 1.95% If you are happy with them, great. Choice is a wonderful thing.

By choice I work for a non-ALPO carrier and my next airline job will be with a non-ALPO carrier.