+1 for RJSAviator. Great points all. I'll take it one further and note that this is exactly why most of my military pilot buds are NOT trying to move into the airline world after retirement. We just can't afford to start from square one. After 20+ years of flying training and experience, we encounter all these factors that RJS talks about and pass.

We look around at where we'd have to start, what we'd be paid, and how long it would take to advance in the current climate, and most of us just can't do it. Most of us just can't take the 80+ percent pay cut with a mortgage, car payments, kids in college, etc., so we move on to something else. Most of the time, it's not a flying job, unless we are fortunate enough to stay connected to the military in some way or have a stroke of luck and get picked up by a major carrier.

Even then, just as in the Aloha case RJS talks about, those who do make the leap have to suck it up for a long, long time, knowing that we won't get paid what our experience and training should bring (and would in any other industry) because of the seniority system, pay scales, and "me first" attitude that the pilot community accepts as normal.

Now, before you fire up your keyboard to flame me, save it. I don't expect special priveleges, nor do I think anybody owes me anything for my service. Far from it. I'm just making an observation. I find it interesting that every time there's a crash or an incident, someone inevitably says that we should be putting some of those super-experienced ex-military guys into cockpits filled with really young guys building hours for peanuts. As long as I can't support my own eating habit--let alone my family's--on entry-level FO pay (even WITH the portion of my retirement the ex doesn't get), those ex-military pilots will choose ground-bound desk jobs the vast majority of the time...

 

I gotta disagree on the elimination of the seniority system. Yeah, it sucks if your company goes TU with no fault of your own, however this industry was, is and always be who you know to get with a good major or company. The senority allows a continuous movement up (albeit it slowly), from reserve to line-holder FO, from FO to CA, weekends off, etc. Having management cherrypick who upgrades, who gets what equipment, who is a lineholder vs. reserve would be a disaster. So I'm gonna work for a company for say 15 years, finally upgrade, then have the CP friend who just lost his job go ahead of me because "he a good ol' boy."? Am I gonna have HR plug in someone ahead of me because "We need more black/female/gay/whatever Captains, so your gonna have to wait to upgrade". No thanks. Senority lists has it's problems, but the alternative is much worse.

 

What would stop you from taking your skill and experience as a captain to another airline then? The only thing holding people back from leaving crappy companies now is the prospect of starting all over again at year 1 pay.

It blows my mind so many supposedly intelligent and educated pilots ignore the world outside of aviation. Do you think most professionals who voluntarily leave one company for another automatically take a pay cut? Take your blinders off friend. Our seniority system IS holding us all back.

 

There are pros and cons with the current seniority list system to be sure. But its abolishment, or worse, some lame NSL, are worse than the worst elements of the status quo. The best we can hope to do is to mitigate some of the bigger negative effects. We can do that in a number of ways, while still preserving the seniority system at each airline. Ending this mentality of "first year pay" is one key stratedgy. First year pay should be 2-3% less than second year pay, which should be 2-3% less than 3rd year pay, etc. Take any major/legacy or established LCC's (JB, AT, etc) 3rd year pay and even the perverbial senior widebody captain at a defunct airline should be able to live off that. That ties into another thing we can do, collectively, and that is to stop living beyond our means, leveraging credit, financing punk ass kid's 6 figure art history appreciation degrees so they can extend their childhood for 4 years, party and "discover themselves", the second homes, boats, etc.

If you are an airline pilot and you can't afford to pay cash for anything other than a reasonable primary home and after you pay cash for what you want, you STILL have 6-12 months pay in very liquid savings and an additional nest egg to draw from, then you CAN NOT AFFORD IT. Over-leveraging, particularly through credit, in any industry is a recipe for disaster. In this industry it guarantees disaster if anything happens to YOUR airline/list. We complain about that and some suggest the answer is to give a portability windfall to the "senior" at every airline (who are usually among the most overextended) to the direct detriment to the vast majority of every other pilot everywhere else. Never going to happen. EVER.

At contract time, we can concentrate more on pay across the baord and less on jailhouse lawyer loop holes where a tiny percentage of pilots can triple dip with impunity. There is a cost to that, and contrary to populist belief that cost isn't paid by management, it is paid by the entire pilot group across the entire pay table in all seats, all the time.

We also need some sore of a national hiring list, NOT a national seniority list. Although that hiring list can have a seniority component (i.e. must hire or at least interview...all or a certain percentage...off this list, perhaps in top down order). Military service could easily count as seniority as well as qualifying to be on that list. Each airline could still set its own requirements, like X amount of PIC or not, degree or no degree, ATP or not, and could still interview and choose who to hire, but it would have to be off the list.

So the newly laid off former senior widebody captain would still have to start over. And that would sting, no doubt. But essentially getting guaranteed interviews at all legacy/major/established LCC's first, and if hired by any one of them, going in at a livable first year pay instead of this defacto 1-2 year B scale nonsense would help immensely. If that individual had his fiscal house in order as well, it wouldn't be the career ending bankruptcy divorce causing depression inducing whopper of a start over it is today. Far from it. It would still sting, but it would be infinitely better than today's status quo, while not harming any other pilot group or individual pilot already at any particular airline.

There is no solution that is perfect to everyone all the time. And like it or not, it matters where one gets hired in this industry. There is no way around that. That is part of every pilot's decision making process, career risk management and financial lifestyle management. If your airline goes T.U., you will have to start over. There is no way around that. However we can all work together to mitigate the negatives in that while preserving the positives our seniority list system provides.

 

I think we are talking about two different things. If you mean a type of national senority list I'm all for that. I was talking about eliminating each companies senority list, which would have management dictate who goes where.

 

Lawyers and doctors, work independently amongst themselves.
Amongst those professional fields, there is a mutual understanding of what compensation should be for services rendered.

Once an attorney or a doctor becomes more experienced, he or she will gain a reputation that will allow them to charge customers for that particular expertise.

Unfortunately, we as pilots, operate under a mask of ongoing ignorance. What I mean by that is, your average passenger is completely oblivious to the experience level of the flight crew. Dire emergency situations don't occur everyday, but we are trained to deal with them accordingly.
Essentially , we are all trained to one particular standard, without exception. By using the doctor and lawyer analogy, we should get our raises and bonuses based on how well we perform on our line checks and sim rides.

Of course that scenario is implausible, but it brings about one specific point. We as a pilot group must collectively decide as a whole what our self worth is. I think the entire arguing point of trying to raise the standards for new pilots trying to break into the industry is comical at best. It is the equivalent of assigning the responsibility of raising compensation and labor contract standards to pilots who don't even work at an airline yet.

Things have gotten as bad as they have because ALPA will essentially ***** themselves out to ANY pilot group willing to divest 2% of a pilot's pay while increasing the member population. Scope was allowed to be given away by those who have passed before me, and ALPA did absolutely nothing to discourage this. As of result of these haphazard decisions, the traditionally, less-experienced regional companies were allowed to grow exponentially at the expense of mainline cutbacks.
Now mainline pilots want to raise the standards, seems backwards to me.
Man up and demand the contract you think you deserve, and if you want a pilot with a Master's Degree in the left seat then you better add another $100K to the captain's salary, at least.

 

So I'll follow up your question with another question. Do you not know how lawyers and doctors limit their numbers or are you just asking that question to ask the question rather than answer my question in this three question ramble?

Supply was rather low at the regionals near the end of this hiring spree and that didn't help raise the regional wages.

 

I know! I know!

When someone needs a lawyer or surgeon they'll always go for the best one they can possibly afford because, in general, people hate dying and they hate going to jail.

When someone buys an airline ticket they'll spend two hours online to save five bucks because nobody dies on airplanes anymore.

 

ugh, this is us, below, we're kind of the same, we turn a screw on a damn assembly line:



Want proof, don't turn that screw like they told you and see what happens.

The nature of what we do as pilots is that we promise to take that plane fly it to the place you told us to fly it and be within these tolerances and to operate it based on these proven and safe procedures. Then we hand it off and the next two guys do the same, then they hand it off, and the next two guys do it the same. There may be some variation in PA's, attitude, consistency of landing, overall smoothness, etc, but if everyone does their job then you should not be able to tell them apart. That's the goal.

So if you're not supposed to tell people apart, how do you reward them based on merit? You don't. What you do, however, is not hire those who you deem not to meet your requirements and you don't pass those who do not meet your requirements.

^^^ 100% agree

^^^ It blows my mind that any supposedly intelligent and educated pilot couldn't understand why seniority exists.

Do you know most companys hire middle management from within only?

And do they do it on merit? Not always. Sometimes its because someone has been there longer. Sometimes its sexist or racist or another -ist. Want that open ended loosey-goosey system to manage 12,000 pilots at Delta alone? Not to mention 68 categories of schedule bidding every month and daily trip assignments and reassignments?!?

What about vacation? I want Christmas and July 4th, where do I go lobby for that? Who do I pay? Who should I send gift cards too?

And what happens when its time to furlough? Hmm? Sounds like a fun place to be. Sure those lawsuits would be flying.

---
I think the NSL is a nonstarter. I mean a Captain at CAL decides he wants to be an AMR Captain, AMR is about to have a bid with 737 openings, CAL Captain applies, he gets an interview, whats the guy got to say?

CAL Pilot: I'm a great Captain! I've got 20 years of accident free flying! I'm typed! I know how to be an airline pilot. I never call in sick unless I'm sick. I'll be committed to you. I'd love to be based in Dallas!

AMR HR: Well, we have thousands of great Captains and thousands of great FO's who'd like to be a Captain. 20 years accident free, 99.99% of our pilots are accident free too. And whether your typed or not doesn't matter, we've still got to send you through our training. And yes, all of our pilots are airline pilots too and they know how to do it. We have lots of people who never call in sick. If you were committed, where were you 20 years ago? Or 18, or 14, or 10? You'd love to be in Dallas? So would a lot of our Miami, San Juan, New York, etc. pilots.

Nonstarter unless you think an airline views their FO's as incomptent and poor hire choices. Then I concede an NSL might have a purpose.

 

I think its as low as $2 actually. According to some DAL network folks I've heard from.

Yep, contracts are already set in stone. You've got years, maybe more thanks to the RLA, before you get to the point you could even begin to claim you need to pay more because entry barriers are higher thanks to the FAA.