food for thought age 65 may have prevented airlines from having to hire in 2007 and 2008 but it actually may have killed the regional airline model, clearly an unintended consequence.

Something that I don't understand, It made good sense to raise 60 to 65 five years ago for the mainlines. In doing so they didn't have to hire and train but they kept their most expensive pilots at the top end of the pay scale. Why is it that regionals feel that senior pilots are overpaid and prefer to keep the school house running with new cheap labor. I understand that people at the bottom of the pay scale cost a lot less than people at the top but running the school house 24/7 365 days out of the year certainly costs a lot as well.

I've said this numerous times on here. We need to get rid of longevity scales. The top pay scale needs to be the only pay scale. This would solve most of our problems. You could start over at the bottom without losing your house or going on food stamps. I don't even have a problem with starting over on vacation time. I feel an Airbus 320 first officer new hire should make the exact same as an Airbus 320 first officer on 12 year pay. They are doing the exact same job. This would stop giving start-up carriers huge advantages on cost. It would prevent regionals from just shutting down when the group gets senior. At the legacy carriers, every captain is at max pay. They only need to fix the first officer scale. It wouldn't even be that hard to do. At the regional level, it would be a little tougher. A national seniority list will never happen. This is the next best thing.

All pilots paid the same
 

Maybe all pilots should be paid the same even Captains and FO's? The company is always fond of saying that they like to hire captains. An FO essentially goes through the same training program.

Skyhigh

Skywest and RP have the unique ability to finance their own aircraft thanks to a healthy balance sheet. They've been able to leverage this to get contracts they wouldn't normally get, and to get higher compensation in exchange for less financial risk for the mainline customer. That higher compensation offsets their higher costs.

If DL wants 9E to take the next batch of 900's, Delta will need to do the financing. If Skywest takes them, they can finance themselves, taking liabilities off the DL balance sheet.

I heard this idea last week. If management wants us to be the lowest paid pilots in the industry, we should look up what the Great Lakes CEO and below make and say that's what you should make. We all should be lowest paid workers in the industry.

This is ALPAs screw up, and its because of greedy idiot pilots, that are now likely unemployed or will be because they become top heavy and close down. ALPA should just set a rate for flying each plane type, and any time a company employee group votes in ALPA those rates are what they ask for, or else get released to strike. It is what many other union heavy machine operators do.

Agree 100%, if we all had same pay/benefits package, cola every year and got rid of longetivity. Seniority for bidding purposes only.

ALPA has basically committed suicide in the last year or so. They have been trying to please the top while eating their young. I haven't met one single pilot in a couple of years that thinks ALPA represents them properly. Someday down the road in these junior pilots career, they're going to be voting to keep ALPA around or send them packing and we'll all remember the days when ALPA treated us so fairly.

That makes entirely too much sense to ever happen. Too bad, because it is what is fair.

Are you guys kidding me? Without ALPA this company would have whipsawed us against each other. Without ALPA Pinnacle would have used Colgan to force you guys at Pinnacle to take concessions or they would transfer planes to Colgan. None of the three groups had a scope clause in their pre merger contract to stop this.

Without ALPA we would not have this decent JCBA we are working under today, its not perfect but its a LOT better than what Colgan was working under before. And its quite a bit better than what Pinnacle had before (barring health benefits).

What do you think would have happened had we not been 1 pilot group right now? I dont think it would have been pretty.

Everyone likes to ***** at ALPA because things are not always perfect. Let me tell you, Teamsters is terrible and in house unions tend to suck. Take a look at USAPA over at US Airways. I would rather have 1 union representing all airline pilots than a bunch of small ones.