The gopher hunter has it right.
There's one other factor in play as well. Pilot morale.
You might think management doesn't care whether we are happy or not but they are currently taking advantage of a group that regularly picks up all the open time, never calls in sick and generally goes all out to get the mission accomplished. That can change quickly with just a little shift in the rhetoric coming from our union leadership.
Moak was all about cooperation and engagement and working together. That worked. Management certainly loved it. Guys bought it. The company prospered financially. The pilots, not so much. We have been operating on the principle of deferred gratification. We worked hard and worked for cheap the last few years expecting to be paid later. Well; later has arrived. We aren't willing to wait another 2 or 3 years to see some payback. Constructive engagement was supposed to be a two-way street. That's about to be tested.
If Anderson reverts to Mullin mode and points to the 2013 amendable date saying "a contract is a contract" then he's quickly going to find himself with a very angry and far less productive pilot group. The operation will suffer and we will be much more assertive and adversarial in the section 6 negotiations. What the captains write on the back of those "Thank-You" cards for our HVCs may not be what management was expecting.
I think that's why they're considering some "adjustments" prior to the amendable date.

 

Hourly pay rates are only part of the equation. I bet Carl is right. When the pay check comes, a SW 737 captain makes more than he does.

 

Never mind

 

All you have to do is look at DOT stats and the DAL 10K to realize the difference between SW pay and DAL pay is retirement funding. In fact SWA's pilots block hour costs are lower than DAL's.

 

Great post, Check! Spot on. The only question I have is whether or not our new MEC is going to be like our old MEC.

 

While you can't get exact numbers for yearly block hours these links do provide some great info.

SWA

DAL

Down near the bottom you will find that SWA flew 2,026,134 Block Hrs for 2009 with 5634 pilots. Thats 360 Hrs/pilot x 2 for the 737 = 720 Hrs/pilot for 2009.

If you assume that 10% don't fly for various reasons the number is 800 Hrs/pilot.

Delta's numbers are much harder to extrapolate because of international ops with 3 and 4 man crews.

Delta flew 2,696,379 Blk Hrs in 2009 with 10,785 pilots. That's 250 Hrs/pilot x 2.5 (which is a wag on my part to account for 3 and 4 pilot crews) = 625 Hrs/pilots.

Again assuming 10% don't fly the number is 695 Hrs/pilot.


Now numbers that are much more important.

For 2009 the revenue per pilot at SWA and Delta were almost the same and historically trend close together.

On the other hand Delta's average pilot salary was $138,000 while SWA average was $177,000.

-vpr

 

Or how to make a net loss look like a gain. It would be an relatively easy sell because we won't know what the final take could have been until we get there. I agree RA would not be interested in an early give or extensions unless he thought it cheaper in the long run.

 

Come on PG,

We have, what 16 747s? Southwest has 547 737s!

So all their captains (assuming they have the longevity) are paid a higher hourly rate than all of our captains except for the few on the 747 and 777.

I'm an A-320 captain. So how is my pay relative to SWA? (Hint: It's a whole lot less.)

But I'm sure you'll point out I get a raise tomorrow and the difference will be less than 50 bucks an hour. Gee, that's so close...

 

Great post, thanks for researching it!!

 

No argument. Your pay (and mine) is a whole lot less than SWA. But that wasn't the point of my post. Carl stated that DAL will open early and give us meager pay raises to "keep us below industry standard". I simply showed that we are at or near the top of the industry at present.

One airline (SWA) does not define "industry standard". Neither do cargo carriers.

So many people continue to bad mouth our pay, while refusing to acknowledge that, in spite of how bad it is relative to the past, we are near the top at the moment. Call them bankruptcy wages if you want, but they are almost industry leading. That's pathetic, I admit, but it is what it is, and to ignore that reality, is to live in a dreamworld.