automatique

Well, you make it hard not to be a whiner!
First of all, there's nowhere else I want to work! However, I am actively looking. Obviously not 121.
I signed up for the higher paying job, of course! But I was about a year too late.
I expected reserve, but not for 17 months (with no end in sight). I expected a West Coast base 50% bigger, as the company projected. I expected a difference in pay, but not over 70k a year vs. a person a couple of years senior to me, in the same seat. I really don't like working 18 days a month vs. the 11 the previous poster bragged about.
I didn't expect the deals that are made outside of seniority! Values?
I hope the pilots five years in the future don't have these concerns! If things are balanced in the future, this website will just wither away.

Blue 2

Realistic
I signed up for the company that up until recently was hyping the following:
1. Annual pay based upon 90 hours a month every month.
2. Growth that would make reserve a brief inconvenience.
3. The most flexible schedules in the industry.
4. Scheduling practices that bring humanity back to air travel.
5. Stock options that would make us all wealthy.
6. Profit sharing that would make up for the shortfall in base pay.
7. Health care coverage that would IMPROVE once we grew.
8. A pay and benefits system that would seek to mirror SWA.
9. A West Coast base.
I hope for the sake of our interviewies and new-hires we've begun to tell the truth. My expectations were not met. That's OK, we just have to roll up our sleeves and start by filling out those surveys.
What will the pilots who come after us say if we were to be successful at blending the pay rates, bringing our pay system back to an industry standard slope, and putting the focus back on real dollars instead of the possibility of dollars some where in the happy future?
"Thank you."


Realistic:
I think you are listening to lounge and cockpit gossip saying what we all would like and not what the company says we have or will have. If/when any of the 1 – 7 were stated by persons in authority at JB what was the context and what was the airline economy when they were made. One of the things that makes JB a company that will last is flexibility. We as a group may not like where the industry is going right now but if you are in it for the career (long run) I think we/you will prosper.

I do concede #’s 8 & 9.
Al S did allude to a pilot pay scale favorably comparable to SWA and we do have a west coast base. Now whether you are senior enough to hold it is another story. I do however, believe there will be more west coast availability in the probably not to near future.

As long as we all continue to pull in the same direction JB the airline will succeed.

Blue 2

automatique
Well, you make it hard not to be a whiner!
First of all, there's nowhere else I want to work! However, I am actively looking. Obviously not 121.
I signed up for the higher paying job, of course! But I was about a year too late.
I expected reserve, but not for 17 months (with no end in sight). I expected a West Coast base 50% bigger, as the company projected. I expected a difference in pay, but not over 70k a year vs. a person a couple of years senior to me, in the same seat. I really don't like working 18 days a month vs. the 11 the previous poster bragged about.
I didn't expect the deals that are made outside of seniority! Values?
I hope the pilots five years in the future don't have these concerns! If things are balanced in the future, this website will just wither away.[/QUOTE]

I do not think you are a whiner. I do think you "expect" more than was offered/promised. What you hear a more senior person makes is not your problem, it's what you make vs what is in the pilot agreement. I'll bet you make what the agreement says is due you based on your hours. (I do not want to get into the pilot agreement discussion here) Look on the bright side some day, if you stay, you will be in the % seniority that the 'senior' guy is today.
I am curious as to what deals have been made outside of seniority. I'd like to see us all take action on something like that.

jblumindtrick

Blue2,

Contrary to popular belief, many of us at JetBlue have actively selected to be here OVER Southwest, Fed Ex, and Alaska due to the above list of 1-9. Even after 9-11 this 1-9 list was still being pumped into the interview process to "sell" the position in order to get this airline growing. This is where a lot of what was said "was never said" like the infamous we don't want career flight attendants. So, based on what "was never said" played vital roles in many individual's SELECTION of airline. This has set understandable expectations for many. Now that the baseline of the industry has dropped further, we can point to the demise of others. This has fostered a take it or leave it attitude which is not healthy for morale. This airline is full of hardworking pilots! There is not a single pilot that wants to rob the company or see it go out of business. I love this place but we have got to take care of our own!

Lounge and cockpit gossip.....you know better than that.

Blue 2

Okay. Let's just say that I never responded to your post "never said" anything about what you posted. Would you assume information I did not present?

The interview is a sales process for the company, especially when there is competion for the pilot product, and a sales process for the candidate. I would wager that both sides, wether it be SWA, FedEx, Alaska, JB or the pilot, polish their vision of reality to a brite shine for the hiring dance. Welcome to the dance.
Many, if not most, of us knew pilots on the inside that is where I got my reality balanced against what I heard at the interview process. Probably why I do not remember those never said items from the interview.

"This airline is full of hardworking pilots! There is not a single pilot that wants to rob the company or see it go out of business. I love this place but we have got to take care of our own!"
I could not have said it better myself, Thanks.

nospin

This thread was supposed to help us put together factual replies to the survey. Perhaps we could go back that direction... The survey is very important to make sure that the senior leadership, whom I do trust and believe will act if given the accurate information, gets the facts and not just candy coated nonsense.

Blue 2

I did the survey ...

Meworry?

I don't know what went on in your interveiw class, but in mine there were no such promises as 1-9 above, except that Al did say that we would like to rise to SWA pay scale. That was before the raises they got with their extended contract, and he did not say we would match that. West Coast base was a maybe, not a promise, and Long Beach was ruled out as a base at the time. Nobody said we would get rich off of stock options, just that we could make some money that way. Others assumed we would mirror SWA and all be multi-millionaires. I flew early on with Captains who had totally unrealistic expectations, such as splits twice per year for their entire careers. These guys obviously never went to business school. Profit sharing is great, but you have to make a profit, and there are not many places you can make more than we do for flying the airbus. I expect pay to eventually rise here, but until then please remember that $/hour do not tell the whole story. Even the most senior pilot at Jetblue would still be an FO at SWA. I'm making a lot more money here than I would be at any other airline with the same length of employment, and so are you, unless you left SWA, Fedex, or UPS to come here.

When the stock price rose to $70 here, everyone except David N. went nuts. He knew it was wildly overvalued, which was why we went with a 3-for-2 split instead of the 2-1 or even 3-1 that some people expected. Stock options are an incentive, and ours are10 year options. If our stock is worth 4 times it's current value when my options are up, I'll be ecstatic. But profits have to increase with size! We have over 90 airplanes now, and we make less money than we did when we had 30. So heck, yeah, let's get a raise, right?! That makes no sense at all. It is a very competitive environment, with high oil prices and low ticket prices. There are plenty of little things for us to whine about, and some of us are trying to make changes, but let's keep the big picture here. It's not a "take it or leave it" attitude, it is the truth. Times are tough in the airline industry, but we are doing OK. Some of us make personal decisions (like where to live and where to be based) that make life tougher. When you take a job, you have to take those things into account before you sign on the dotted line, not after, based on the current situation, while weighing the possibilities. If you are a commuter on reserve in LGB with no growth in sight, yes it's tough. But there are always alternatives. Sorry to preach, but that's the way it is (in my opinion, of course).

FNG320

Meworry,
Most of what you say is good and realistic (no pun intended). However, on pay, you are 100% wrong. You seem to speak from the position of "I've got mine and its enough for me, I don't care about the other guy". However, no pay raise since the Fall 2001 if crap. SWA, AWA, and even AA have gotten raises. For a company to continue to make money and not give us employees a pay raise is crap, a failure of the CARING value in the first order! Yes, SWA's raise was excessive, so JB management should explain that they can't match SWA and give us at least a cost of living raise to offset inflation. I have run the numbers. It takes 1% of the margin to give a cost off living raise to every single employee at jetblue. So we make 8% vs 9% margin. On the other hand, if you raise the ticket price $1 you can give everyone a 2.5-2.8% cost of living raise. I don't know anyone that will stop riding JB because the ticket price went up one dollar! Neeleman even boast that we can charge a premium for many of our market above what the other airlines are charging and they will still ride JetBlue. For JetBlue to continue to make money at our expense is sinful. We have lost 10% of our buying power since fall 2001. In less than 3 more years it will be 20% (don't forget compounding!).

Our cost are going up daily, but JetBlue management doesn't seem to care! For the company to make money, and not pass it on to us is crap. I would much rather have a pay raise than profit sharing right now. I have bills to pay! At least if there is zero profit I will still have my pay raise. Why do you think we have so much turn-over in our lower paid positions (customer service, rampers, and even some flight attendants) They can't live on the pay scale that is decreasing with age.

So everyone who thinks we need a pay raise should push it in the survey! However, the way management has responded over the last 3 years, I don't expect them to do anything about it, or even acknowledge the problem/complaints in the survey. They never have so far, the survey ends up being just a "feel good" thing to make us think they care. At least we will have done what we can until we form a UNION to get things straight. I don't want a UNION, but if management won't take care of us (like they have often promised to do), then we must do what we must to do to survive .

Just my opinion.....

FNG

Meworry?

I can't be wrong, I was already wrong once this year. But I do care about the other guy, because we don't get paid individually around here. Your pay and my pay are linked together, and sure, I'd like to make more, but I don't see it for a couple of years yet. So let me explain why I'm not wrong.

You mentioned margins of 9%. Unfortunately, that would be operating margin. Our net margins the last two quarters? Q1 2005 was 1.9%, and the quarter before was worse, .07%. Net margins are what determine earnings per share, and that is what investors care about. Ours is not good, except by comparison to most the other 121 carriers. An across the board 2.8% increase in pay (for everyone, not just pilots) pretty much wipes out profit. What about cash flow? Also not good. We have a positive operating cash flow in all quarters, but that is by far not where we get most of our cash, unfortunately. We get it from issuing securities, mostly in the form of debt. Last quarter we got about 70 million from operating cash flow, and over 340 million from issuing debt. You have to pay the interest in that debt. Our debt to equity ratio is off the page. We have the same debt as SWA, and they are five to six times our size. Most of the cash and short term securities on our balance sheet comes from financing, not operationg cash flow. That is a risky financial business model. We go a few quarters without profit, and we are in trouble. Raise ticket prices? Sure, if oil keeps rising, we can get away with that because everyone will want to raise prices. But just to finance a pay raise in a fiercely competitive and costly environment? I think not. Management's job is to create value for shareholders. Yes, they do have responsibility to employees, but they have to consider investors and wall street first. If our credit rating drops or stock falls out, we could face a real crisis. It will stay that way until we start hitting over $1.50 earnings per share or so, annually, which would justify our current stock price.

That is not to say your analysis of our buying power is not correct, though one could argue that our annual pay raises are cost of living raises, because they aren't enough to call them anything else. It's just the way it is now. Management did the right thing in Jan of 2002 with a retroactive pay raise. When the time is right, our pay will go up. For now, we need to be patient. We haven't made it yet, and a union will definitely not help us make it.

I note that like me, you have a military background, FNG. We always got our annual pay increased there. Good thing for us that DoD did not need to make a profit, wasn't it?