Originally Posted by
antbar01
To those who are under the spell of management, I suggest that the next time you're at cruise... do a little calculating as to what the entire crew is making on the given leg you are flying, versus the amount of money that is being combusted in the rear of the aircraft. It's high school math, and at XJT we have the fuel price paid by the company right on our paperwork (ask the fueler if you need to).
If you do this, you will see that if you are an FO like myself that your entire salary for the flight is comparable to the cost to the company incurred when ATC let one extra dude take off before you when you already had them both turning. Note too that NOBODY from ASA or XJT has asked for fuel conservation measures in the last few years.
Crew salaries and benefits are a minute fraction of the equation. They could double our pay and have nearly the same bottom line.
Pilots suffer from (appropriately) enormous egos, but don't allow your judgement to be clouded as to how much your big fat check is hurting the company's shareholders.
You have to remember that under capacity purchase agreements, the regional carrier does not pay for the fuel, so your calculations mean nothing because fuel does not impact the bottom line except in special cases such as ferry and test flights. Delta and Conited pick up the tab at the pump, then pay a contractually predetermined fee to the operator for the departure of that flight. This predetermined fee in ASA's case is less than what it costs the company to operate the flight, so it becomes management's duty to bring the company's cost structure below the point that the fee for departure is more than the cost of operating the flight, thus bringing the company back to profit. Doubling the crew cost would indeed hurt the bottom line.