dozer

I wonder if Tim H.'s pay as CEO is accordingly small due to the number of aircraft that Midwest will soon have left or the number of seats he decided to put in them?

Flyboydan

Nah, it is all the money that is left over, oh wait, what money they can barely pay for the jet-a.

RavenMach

Any latest on the meeting from yesterday?

Roper92

I'm speechless...good thing I have a keyboard here to convey my thoughts. How could you say that about your own employees. How can they respect you after that? Why doesn't management get it? Treat your employees right and they will produce and help the company out.

ClipperJet

I've said this over and over and over again...

If we didn't demand to be paid by the size/seats on the airplane then management wouldn't be able to use our own arguments (more revenue generated/responsibilty for more lives) against us.

But, since we DO make this agrument, we HAVE to expect them to do so. 88 seats is 88 seats. That's 88 seats of revenue. That's 88 passenger lives we're responsible for.

If we all were being paid by seniority/years of service instead of aircraft type we wouldn't care if it was a 50 seat RJ or a 747-400. The pay would be the same. It'd probably still be gowning down, but management would have a more difficult time making the case.

rickair7777

No, we do need to get paid by seats, and here's why...

Seats = revenue capacity. By demanding a percentage of revenue, we have the hope of someday making 200K+.

If we just get paid to do the job, regardless of revenue capacity, then management will drive down wages based on the fact that small airplanes can't generate enough revenue to pay higher salaries. Pretty simple there...if there's not enough income, you can't pay out money you don't have. Unfortunately management would just consider the rate for the smallest airplane as being fair for any size airplane...you're doing same job, right?

This is actually the way UPS does it...it works OK for them because their smallest airplanes are still pretty large, and their cargo op generates WAY more revenue than PAX. But in the pax world, we would all be getting paid whatever a 50-seat RJ could support...which isn't much with oil at $150.

I said we need to get paid by seats, but the devil is in the details...we ACTUALLY need to get paid by certified seating capacity of the airplane, not actual seats installed...

If you install fewer seats, you should be able to make more money...

1) By installing premium seats for which you charge more than the economy seats they replaced AND/OR
2) Carrying more cargo...this is a big money-maker (or should be) for anything larger than an RJ.

RJ's only have enough cargo space for their baggage and a few small high-priority packages.

We should demand to get paid by the certified seating capacity of the airplane, because that approximates the revenue capacity. It's up to management to USE that capacity properly.

ClipperJet

Those are all very valid points, but the argument works the other way.

Smaller airplanes can generate less revenue. The pilots demand a share of the revenue. Therefore we will pay those pilots less. This reduces the costs. Airlines had the incentive to use smaller planes with lower crew costs (in hindsight that may have been a bad move, but that was their incentive)

The reality is that the senior people will always make the most money. They will bid the biggest planes. The junior people will be making the least money because they can't hold the biggger airplanes. They will always be looking to "move up." This increases training costs--money that can't be used to pay higher salaries. Throw in a furlough where many people are bumped back and have to retrain. Even more money is wasted.

Packer Backer

You just unknowing made a good argument against yourself. Why would senior pilots bid bigger planes if they got paid the same to fly a smaller one? So they can fly long haul freight and be gone from their family more? This is one of the major reasons UPS does it this way. It reduces pilot incentive to move from one airplane to another thereby lowering training costs.

RuttR

No, I think the rest of the industry is 32% lower than what the average pilot should be earning per hour and 45% below what the average pilots pension, health and other benifites should have.

Spaceman Spliff

At the rate things are going right now, $200k is not going to be a very significant amount in a few years.