It seems like a lot of posts are concentrating on SWA. Look at their pay rates compared to AA, DAL, UAL, USA. Look at OH compared with XJ, RAH, YV, and OO. Some ALPA, some SWAPA, some non-union, some APA, some teamsters. All different pay rates.

My point is that we always mistakenly classify an airline by the mission they carry out - major, regional, fee for departure, or at risk. We might all be in the same "business" doing the same thing, but we are all in drastically different "companies". SWA pay rates are much higher than other airlines that do the same job. They can afford to do this because of their business model and financial situation. How much money per year would the SWA pilots be losing out on if they just got "industry average" instead of their fair share of the SWA pie?

What can Skywest Airlines afford to pay our pilots? Without pilot funded representation to hire accountants to examine Skywest's books, we will never know. I believe it is more than this pay proposal.

People can point to Comair and say that if we get paid more we will just lose contracts like they did...we will price ourselves out of the industry. They completely ignore the fact that Delta owns Comair and doesn't want to be in the regional airline business anymore. They ignore the fact that Comair operates a large number of 50 seat aircraft for an airline that wants to cut down on the number of 50 seat aircraft. They ignore the fact that Comair's aircraft are some of the oldest CRJ-100's and CRJ-200's in the world which contribute to higher maintenance costs and lower reliabilty. All of these things, along with employee compensation affect the company.

If you are going to cite pilot pay and the demise of airlines, you would also have to point to Mesa and say that they lost their contracts while getting paid much less than industry average. Pilot pay is often blamed for the downfall of a company and in reality it is poor business practices. It is a little disheartening to hear fellow pilots reciting that line.

Comair and Mesa are drastically different companies from Skywest. Comair at its peak had less than half as many aircraft as Skywest Airlines does now. Mesa has always been run cheaply which affected their performance. Neither company had the benefit of a strong cash position and solid long term contracts with a diversified portfolio of airlines.

There is such a thing as an economy of scale that is helping Skywest financially in benefit costs, maintenance costs, training costs, and other synergies. Skywest has stated publicly that they are in such a good financial position that they get rock bottom financing on aircraft. We need to stop comparing apples to oranges. As far as regionals go, Skywest is in the same business, but we are a drastically different company with a much stronger business model and financial position and our pay rates should reflect that.