That's all well and good but there is a cost to pay for "pulling up the ladder"

Lets say you'll retire as #1000

With no new hires and attrition let's say there are only 2000 pilots on property.
You're at the 50% point for seniority.
That means you'll retire as a senior FO or a junior CA on junior equipment and the lower pay that comes with that.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that we keep the pilot numbers steady at 12000.
Then you'd retire at about 83%.
You'd hold a decent schedule on a wide-body with good pay.

It's kind of funny. In the "worst recession in decades" Delta was losing millions, but managed to carry every single pilot on the list. Why wouldn't it be possible to earn more and hire at the same time? Especially when the airlines as a group are posting record profits not seen in a decade?

I just don't think hiring and much better pay are mutually exclusive.
Actually not-hiring will mean less pay, except for those very few that retire in the double digits.

Let's not already put our head in the sand before we start negotiating.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all that.

Cheers
George

George;
It is possible and many must remember that the carrying costs of pilots are no where near where they were pre CH11. With Health Care coverage and costs where it is, that benefit is about 10-12K per pilot (avg), training which is static to some degree has been streamlined, and is rather cheap, there is no DB plan, only a fixed percentage of your gross earnings, and other administrative costs, which are nominal.

The overall cost of carrying pilots is a lot cheaper, as the no furlough over the last few years has proven. The flow down added to the costs, but the dollar amount for DAL is significantly lower than it was pre CH11.

For DAL though the GS allows pilots to fly their bottoms off for more pay, and there is no limit but the FAR's. Because of that, they will use that option every day of the week over carry more pilots than they think they need with pilots GSing away.

But you get payback days, or more vacation :) It's a Festivus miracle.

Of course the carrying costs/pilot are lower, but that's really not my concern.

My worry is the "pull the ladder up" mentality.

All I'm trying to show is that there is a specific price to pay in seniority, if we don't hire.

Cheers
George

While I dont completely understand if you are saying fences are good or bad, in the last AE, the whale had insufficient DalN bidders and some south guys got on it.

Not sure if it's germane here, but at wn, for example, a large % (read: majority) of the list has the opportunity to drop trips as well as pick up premium time if they are willing to work for it.

That is not true. I had a bid in for it, and did not get it. I am not subject to a freeze. What you saw was previous north guys that had been awarded a pre-merger south base and/or aircraft on previous AE's being awarded the whale.

I get that. And we will hire, a lot, over the coming years and decades. What I don't think we need to do, however, is to force additional hiring to cover the exact same amount of flying just for the sake of hiring. Is there a seniority based benefit to hiring for the sake of hiring? Sure. But there is a cost to that that is proportional, and that price will come out of somewhere else anyway, negating the bump in seniority for sliding up to a slightly higher pay rate a little bit sooner than one otherwise would. Forcing extra hiring for the same amount of flying is expensive and will come out of pay, benefits, maybe scope and of course QOL elsewhere.

Some things will result in more pilots needed, such as the new flight time/duty time rules...assuming its not just a "hey let's gut the relief pilot positions to pay for slight improvements to the regionals" which I'm suspiscious it will be, but some needed improvements in reserve rules and other work rules as well. But we're kidding ourselves if we don't recognize that productivity is vital to each pilot getting as big of a piece of pie as possible.

If we even mention SWA narrowbody rates or JetBlue 100 seater rates in the negotiating room, management will fire back instantly that productivity is the reason for that, and to a significant extent they will be right and everyone knows it.

C12K will be an increase, and that increase will be substantial. The checkbook will be opened. Period.

How much we will be able to get will be applied to various areas. 50 million per year more? 500 million per year more? 2 billion per year more? Whatever the number is that we get, I just don't think spending that on fake mobility is the answer. If we can force raises by more hiring and therefore more opportunities to bid up, we can simply take that money and put it into additional pay rates, retirement, scope and work rules to begin with.

I'm a bit shocked by all this enthusiasm for increasing pilot productivity.

We could avoid a lot of unnecessary hiring if we scrapped all those silly trip rigs and duty rigs in our book.

We could get by with a lot fewer reserves if we knocked off a couple X days. 13 is way too many. And shortcall limits? What's up with that? Why only 6 short-calls? Make it 8 or 10.

And how about some good old "lean-overs" like the RJ drivers do? Sleep on the jet. Think of all the new-hires we could eliminate.

The list goes on and on.

This, otherwise I'd be in the seat too ;)