Yeah? I based it on that among other Things....meaning that our group of FOs are not first year new hires or second year or third year and in many cases they came with more experience than the Captains they fly with and after a few years in the company they probably in some cases do a better job than some Captains.

Does that hurt much to accept? yeah maybe but these FOs may have families exactly like the Captain.

Example: Captain is a 7 year making $73 while "managing" and the FO is a 4 years making $39 while doing a lot of the work. That is 87% more pay than the FO working together sharing all the time and work and sometimes the FO even working harder. Is that fair, yes it may be for some....specially for some captains....specially for the ones that upgraded really fast and never had to experience years and years of low pay...

That is all ok to me as long as they are offered at least the same raise.

If you think that picture is insulting someone or you are not familiar with it then I dont know how to explain it to you. I am not saying that all pictures of work days are like that but that scenario exists and that may be acceptable and very ok specially for the Captains.

What it is not ok is that the lower paid FO that is working as hard for the succes of the company as any Captain is offered less that the (relative to the FO) very well paid Captain in the same flight deck.

If the Company thinks that if the FAA would grant "Single pilot operations" they could fire all FO and the operation would run the same they are highly mistaken. (That arrogant mentality have been around for long).

The FOs in my opinion plays as an important part of the operation as the Captain and deserves better recognition from their leaders.

Yeah I am happy for the brother FOs flying the BRO but we all know that the pay in the industry is (or should be) per seat ( at least we think it is) and the 50 the last time I saw has much more seats than the BRO so while they got 5% offer to close the gap a litle with their Captain pay, the CRJ FO is insulted with 1% and even lower than what it is offered to the CRJ Captains.

CRJ FOs should been offered the same raise as the BRO FOs 5% to close the gap a litle comparing to the Captains.

An Embraer 120 4 year FO is getting approximate $1 per seat per hour.

A 4 year CRJ FO is today getting approximate $0.78 per seat per hour, not to mention when they fly the 700 or 900.

Whom of them is the less paid comparing with company revenues for the amount of seats?

Why is it that the gap between the BRO FOs and their Captain can be less but not between an CRJ FO and Captain,...Can it be because of future BRO FOs coming from United????

the CRJ FO got the list expanded to 8 years to top at $45

An 8 year CRJ Captain is paid $75 or 65 % more than a top out CRJ FO. After that the captains salary is increased to top out at 20 years and the difference is just ridiculous. The top Captain gets 148% more than a top FO.

 

So the name calling begins. Great I am dealing with another desperately misinformed poster.

Before you call me a sell-out or hypocrite, let me say you know nothing about me or my character. If you want to insult me, PM me. I will plainly share with you my reciprocal feelings.

If you took half a moment to review any of my posts on these threads over the years you will clearly see I am very much in favor of airline unions --- unions that are like SWAPA. I am very much against unions like ALPA. I have personally known several SWAPA pilots for more than 20 years. Yes, some of them are "chest-thumpers" to a certain degree. But when a pilot group/company can walk-the-walk, they have earned the right to talk-the-talk.

Go ahead, insult me again, call me a SWAPA "chest-thumper." I hate to tell you, but in my opinion, that is a compliment.

If you like ALPA, great. Good for you. I have no problem with you or any body who feels like ALPA is the agent they want to represent the future of their aviation career. I don't feel the same way.

Personally, nothing would make me happier than to have an in-house union at Skywest to represent our pilot group.

 

It seems like a lot of posts are concentrating on SWA. Look at their pay rates compared to AA, DAL, UAL, USA. Look at OH compared with XJ, RAH, YV, and OO. Some ALPA, some SWAPA, some non-union, some APA, some teamsters. All different pay rates.

My point is that we always mistakenly classify an airline by the mission they carry out - major, regional, fee for departure, or at risk. We might all be in the same "business" doing the same thing, but we are all in drastically different "companies". SWA pay rates are much higher than other airlines that do the same job. They can afford to do this because of their business model and financial situation. How much money per year would the SWA pilots be losing out on if they just got "industry average" instead of their fair share of the SWA pie?

What can Skywest Airlines afford to pay our pilots? Without pilot funded representation to hire accountants to examine Skywest's books, we will never know. I believe it is more than this pay proposal.

People can point to Comair and say that if we get paid more we will just lose contracts like they did...we will price ourselves out of the industry. They completely ignore the fact that Delta owns Comair and doesn't want to be in the regional airline business anymore. They ignore the fact that Comair operates a large number of 50 seat aircraft for an airline that wants to cut down on the number of 50 seat aircraft. They ignore the fact that Comair's aircraft are some of the oldest CRJ-100's and CRJ-200's in the world which contribute to higher maintenance costs and lower reliabilty. All of these things, along with employee compensation affect the company.

If you are going to cite pilot pay and the demise of airlines, you would also have to point to Mesa and say that they lost their contracts while getting paid much less than industry average. Pilot pay is often blamed for the downfall of a company and in reality it is poor business practices. It is a little disheartening to hear fellow pilots reciting that line.

Comair and Mesa are drastically different companies from Skywest. Comair at its peak had less than half as many aircraft as Skywest Airlines does now. Mesa has always been run cheaply which affected their performance. Neither company had the benefit of a strong cash position and solid long term contracts with a diversified portfolio of airlines.

There is such a thing as an economy of scale that is helping Skywest financially in benefit costs, maintenance costs, training costs, and other synergies. Skywest has stated publicly that they are in such a good financial position that they get rock bottom financing on aircraft. We need to stop comparing apples to oranges. As far as regionals go, Skywest is in the same business, but we are a drastically different company with a much stronger business model and financial position and our pay rates should reflect that.

 

I concur entirely. I don't want to "burn the house down," I just want my vote to contribute to the overall betterment of regional pilot pay and lifestyle. I think they can do much better than this and right on the SAPA communication it said that if we vote this down they'll go back and renegotiate. Some will scoff, but I believe it to be true. Thanks for all the input!

 

For the sake of the discussion here are some pay rates you won't get on APC, and in particular the CRJ900 rates:



And as a reminder:

 

ALPA dues is 1.85 percent.

 

......or gate agents, FA's, rampers, dispatchers, Mx professionals, and the list keeps going and going.

Q's? ..... Do you sell the tickets? Set prices? Design and approve the marketing campaigns? Determine which markets to target or back off of? Decide on what types of drinks or food to sell? Etc?

No, you just move passengers and you have no control over the revenue your airline directly generates off those passengers. You can affect your airlines future revenue by how well you treat your current passengers (who you had no control over or input into bringing in) but then again gate agents and FA's have more direct contact with our revenue than we do. And yes you can affect the bottom line by how well you operate your a/c but that's about it.

We are labor and we are replaceable.

 

No, we are skilled labor. Please keep that mentality when considering what your job is worth.

 

Same goes for a teacher, an Aircraft Mx worker or a deep-water rig worker; regardless of how you sugar coat it, we are replaceable labor. We quit and there are thousands more standing in line waiting for our spot. Yes replacing us has a higher cost than replacing a FA or gate agent but none the less we are replaceable.

I'm certain that Jerry and Friends jump for joy every time a pilot turns in his 2 weeks notice.

 

exactly "Matchpoint"!!

how much did a gate agent pay for his certificates? or how much did the Ramper?

It is very arrogant to try to compare pilots that have spent 50 to 100K+ getting to a 121 operation with rampers, gate agents, FA, etc.

One should be paid according to what one invested like in any other profession.

Rampers, FAs, gate agents do invest some in getting to their positions, maybe a litle bit of time and change but to compared them to pilots, give me a break...........

The difference in investment and time that it gets to achieve the different position is also why FAs, Rampers and gate agent cannot ask for more pay just because the pilots want more.

also, most FAs, rampers and gate agents would like to be pilots if they could do it. Let me know of any pilot that would like to be a FA, gate agent or ramper............

Stop taking down the Pilot profession and putting it together with all the lowest workers out there. We are together with them when it comes to pay but that is the problem that we have to do something about because we do not belong there.