Trying to understand how our industry got this way is kind of like the 4 blind men trying to describe an elephant each holding on to a different part. One has an ear, one a leg, the trunk, the tail.

I work for a self described ULCC. Prior to this my background was military so my perspective is neccessarily narrow. Even so, I don't see how my carrier is responsible for pilot woes at the legacies. Consider these points:

It was the legacy carriers with the blessing of their respective pilot unions that created B scales and fostered the growth of regional airlines. Neither of those two descisions had anything to do my carriers existance. They did have much to do with wrecking T&C of pilots

The fallout from 9/11 gave airline management a cover to gut labor contracts in a way they probably could not have done before.

It's not entirely a zero sum game. As with Ryan in europe, our market is customers who normally would not have flown at all, or rarely.

One of ALPAs mantras is that pilot costs have nothing to do with the success or failure of an airline. Complaining about pilot wages at a LCC is therefore a straw man argument.

Before you complain about low wages and poor work rules at an LCC, however, you might want to do a little homework. Ive been with my carrier 13 years and my T&C are quite attractive and probably better than yours.

I'm not looking for a fight. Lots of smart folks with more time and skin in this game than I have. From where I sit I just don't see LCCs being responsible for whats wrong with this industry. JMAO

 

The downside to a Free Market Economy is "the churn..." Kind of like Kmart (or other similar retailers of the day) not figuring out how to deal with Walmart.

What is the solution? No more entrepreneurship?

S

 

Reregulation of the industry is the only way it will stop.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that though! Too many Congressmen and Senators want to fly with their girlfriends to their condos in Palm Beach, for $49.

 

I'm not against entrepreneurship, nor do I favor reregultion (although we're pretty well "regulated" as it is).

The problem is how the crony (non) capitalist system is set up. The government is supposed to vett all start ups for viability, yet the government blindly rubber stamps all of them while over 95% of them fail. But they are rubber stamped so the politicos can provide low fares to the masses, labor and industry stability be dammed.

On the other side of the equation, when a carrier should by all rights go away, they are bailed out while at the same time taking massive cuts that end up dragging everyone else down. Look at USAir 10 years ago. Had they liquidated, the other airlines wouldn't have furloughed many if at all and wouldn't have had nearly the leverage against labor so the cuts taken would have drastically less. Add in no VX, no SkyBus, no IndyAir and no JetBlue, and the remaining airlines would have been hiring like crazy and been more than able to fend off AirTran and Southwest, the latter of which wasn't nearly as much of a problem but they all still grew as fast as possible replacing legacy jobs with their super junior jobs.

Fast forward to today and USAir captains make less than many FO's so they didn't benefit in the long run either, but management sure did. Now we are agressively subsidizing foreign airlines to the tune of 5 million per plane per year and celebrating their discriminatory employment practices that would get any US company SWAT raided by machine gunners and shut down over night.

We need to stop allowing start ups at anywhere near the threshold we do. That doesn't require new laws but upholding ones we already have. The DOT should never rubber stamp all these idiotic experiments. Standing by for People's Express and SkyBus II and others in the coming years as well as the endless expansion of existing ponzh scheme ULCCs that have to live in growth mode. Then there's the foreign EGO airlines that we subsidize while at the same time subsidizing their nations by borrowing from them to defend them which devalues our currency so we have to keep sending them even more of our wealth to do so.

We need to end those subsidies and allow failing companies to fail. The amount of churn caused by the free market would be significantly less than the churn created by redundant layers of failed policy and misguided politics.

 

You make some good points. Notice I said that ULCC's are only one of the reasons for our problems. I guess you could look at them as more a result of our problems instead. There's plenty of other issues here, including government interference, the publics' insatiable demand for low fares at all costs, and stubborn, sometimes unreasonable union demands. I guess it's a chicken-or-egg argument, but certainly well financed and politically connected (probably interchangeable terms these days) start-ups like JB and VX benefit from young (seniority wise), lower paid labor to take customers from the legacies. At some point these companies will have the same issues that we do, and someone else will come along to take their place. It's a great cycle for consumers at least, but it wreaks havoc with our careers.

 

Hey non-DL guys,

Save yourself some keystrokes. If you are not DL, you are inferior.

gloopy refers to AS as a regional that's taking DL flying (among other gems). AS, as we all know- correction- as most of us know, is a well-respected legacy.

There are many @ DL that still look down @ WN and Fedex because those guys were the DL rejects at some time in the past (their words, not mine). I have heard these sentiments while jumpseating on DL. That was before NK had their new contract- I can only imagine what they were saying about NK then.

I have had the pleasure of riding on Virgin America. IMO, hands down, the best, most consistent economy product in the US right now. Virgin guys/gals don't need to defend themselves and I really wish you would not try to. Why do you care what some keyboard commandos feel about you? You haven's scabbed and you're not an alter-ego company. Let them blow all the hot air that they want to. I wish you well and I hope that your company succeeds.

Spirit guys also should not try to explain themselves. Your business model has proven itself as demonstrated by your profitability and growth. NK was the best QOL I have ever had. The product is not something that I’d pay for, but there are millions of people that choose to. Again, you're not scabs, not an alter-ego and you don't OUTSOURCE A-N-Y of your flying. Let the DL experts rationalize why they do.

It seems some on here truly believe that if everyone else just packed up and left then their company would do well, they would get the contract that they had 10-12 years ago and that they’d rule the world. It could happen, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

I guess my request is, try your best to not engage them. They troll the boards and interject their unwanted opinions on almost every thread now and it has negatively affected the level of discourse on this site. I don’t have anyone on my ignore list, I just kinda read and mentally discard much of the drivel. Give it a try, it may help you as well.

 

Some of what you say makes sense, but you seriously believe that VA was underfunded and had inept management at their inception? I have no clue what "vetting" would have said their plan won't work. One more thing, how do think it is a good thing that the government determine the probable survivability of a private company? You spending too much time in Russia or something?

s

 

You sound like a mom telling her son how to deal with the bullies at the playground. I haven't seen anyone on this thread putting VX pilots down for anything. How about contributing something useful to the discussion.

 

 

I'm sure Virgin US does have the best service. In fact, their results might be better if they just mailed every customer a crisp $100 bill and said "thanks for flying United." It isn't hard to be popular when your charging nothing for an expensive product.

Making a profit is an entirely different thing.

What Virgin was set up to do, failed. Virgin was unable to drive United out of operation. Eating United is a cost prohibitive big bite that Virgin can't chew.

At this point Virgin is illegally dumping capacity in the US market. In more normal days Virgin would be up to its ears in DOJ attorneys, but in these times government officials are only too happy to unload some Brits of their money to employ California residents, thankfully accepting the money as the teacup sized bailing operation which might prolong the buoyancy of the Titanic.

Eventually whoever is funding this folly will pull the plug.

Great airline, I guess. But it is economic nonsense. The surprise is that it has been around this long.