kfahmi

This is the only area in which I'd disagree...pay should reflect one's relevant experience. So a 20-year CA should make more than a 5-year CA, and so forth. That's how it (generally) works in most other industries; experience is valued and compensated.

Of course, then the question becomes, how do you define experience? Total time? Total # of years at the airline (classic seniority)? Total time in the equipment you're on?

Still, all I'm saying is that the 'modern' system of airline pay calculation was created what, nearly 100 years ago? It does not remotely seem to fit the modern age...

NineGturn

I believe this is exactly what he said.

There...you just answered your own question. Since when do airlines pay pilots based on their experience? Never! It's always been about longevity.

Yes.

Centra

Getting pilots new(ish) to this industry to realize there is history pre-2011 seems to be a battle. Let alone learning the roots of the industry.

However, if people would even spend even a cursory amount of time reading the books you mentioned, they'd realize that none of this is new, and today's airline management is still pulling from the playbook of E.L. Cord, George T. Baker, Dick Ferris, Frank Lorenzo, etc....

tom11011

Regional pilots don't care about pay. In fact they don't really care as a whole about their entire employment situation. This is obvious because the situation continuously perpetuates itself. In summary regional pilots care just enough to vent their issues in the crew room or this website but do not care enough to do anything constructive about it. It's entirely the fault of pilots, there is nobody else to blame. Accept that and hopefully move on quickly to better.

satpak77

Trading hours for dollars = professional pilot jobs

other "professions" which follow that model include Burger King and Wal Mart

kfahmi

Well, lawyers bill by the hour. As do management consultants. Both of those are clearly white-collar occupations.

And no matter how we are paid, no matter what jobs we perform, we all exchange finite slices of our lives in return for money. From the girls working East 14th St. in Oakland to the CEO of UAL...

kfahmi

I can't say I agree. Nearly every regional pilot I've met, with the exception of some senior captains who are happy with their $120K annual salaries and the relatively easy schedules their seniority allows them to hold, wants nothing more than to get to the majors as quickly as possible. They care very much about their employment situation.

However, given that the majors have more applicants than they can possibly handle, the only realistic way for non-military pilots to get the required experience is to tough it out at a regional for a decade, perhaps more. How else do you expect people to earn that coveted 1,000 hours of turbine PIC? Sure, there's corporate (which is a more difficult game to get into, and can involve a lot fewer flying hours per year if you're doing Pt. 91 operations). But what else is there, really?

Larry in TN

kfahmi works for a non-union airline. ALPA was not involved in creating the compensation system under which he works.

Pilot pay by the hour is analogous to being paid by the piece. An airline's product is an available-seat-mile (ASM). When an ASM is sold it becomes a revenue-seat-mile (RSM). The number of block hours a pilot flies is roughly equivalent to the number of ASMs he produces. If he flies a larger or faster airplane he produces more ASMs per hour so his hourly rate will generally be higher.

It's not a perfectly accurate relationship but it's close enough for both management and labor.

The problem that kfahmi identified was that of an inefficient schedule which left him sitting around the airport for a significant amount of time. One what that union contract have addressed this is with duty rigs where you are paid a minimum amount for each hour on duty. This provides incentive for the company to produce more efficient schedules as inefficient schedules will cost them more money per ASM produced.

In this case it was unscheduled delays which created an excess of sitting (non-paid) time. This airline's duty-rig system apparently only applies to the SCHEDULED duty time. While that does provide an incentive for the airline to produce efficient schedules it doesn't help the pilot who gets caught up in unplanned delays.

Some airlines have tried systems which pay by duty time instead of flight time but that system doesn't provide as much incentive for a pilot to pick up extra flying. Such extra flying improves the pilot's productivity and helps keep costs lower so the airlines generally prefer a system which encourages it.

Paid2fly

How about instead of a "base salary", they just paid us for every hour that we were on duty? If you got paid the same regardless of the trip efficiency, then would anyone really care if they flew 35 or 90?

JamesNoBrakes

That's not really all that generous when you consider what benefits/retirement/health care, etc, actually costs...