Airline Pilot Central Forums - The lunacy of airline pay calculation

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Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes (Post 1849038)

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

Indeed; hiring contractors and issuing 1099s instead of having actual employees (with all their associated costs) is a GREAT way to keep labor expense down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kfahmi (Post 1848944)

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...

Trip Rig and min duty day. Look those up. Get your pilot group to negotiate those items. Maks the unproductive trips less appealing to the company and a financial hit.

Not sure why you are in this industry? Did you not understand how this worked when you were building all those hours to become an airline pilot? Did you never ask the question how am I paid and for what? Seriously, your lack of personal responsibility in this amazing.

Plain and simple....cognitive dissonance.....pilots are suckers lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by kfahmi (Post 1848944)

At least the girls admit they're *****s. More than we can say about ourselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larry in TN (Post 1848982)

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

The fact that all non union scheduled airlines utilize the seniority system to hire pilots pretty well shows that it's a system that is in the best interests of management and not the union pilots. The problem with it at the regional level is the bottom end is drying up and the seniority model is designed to attract people at the bottom end while ignoring a potentially large pool of available pilots who are either sitting on the sidelines or working elsewhere but looking to make a lateral move.

Currently the only options an experienced regional pilot has for a lateral job move are Corporate, Asia or a non flying job.

(BTW it's generally not cool to hand out personal info about other members here if you happen to know them)

Quote:

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.

Except that it doesn't work that way anymore. Ticket prices don't follow that model either.

A 50 seat jet can actually be more efficient than a 150 seat jet on shorter routes, especially when loads are not going to fill that 150 seat jet. Pilots are a fixed cost but it doesn't mean that pilots need to be paid in proportion to the seats to make the jet profitable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by galaxy flyer (Post 1848759)

Another idea, kahfmi, try a conversation with a railroader. There is more than a passing resemblance between the two systems because the airlines model for Union contracts was....the railroads. It's evolved, but it has its similarities. You can't decry the current system for its admited faults without understanding how it hit this way.

Don't like seniority, speak to guys at railroads or other unionized industries (autos come to mind) where guys are junior at 58.

GF

Except working at the railroad (I do) you make really good wages....have awesome medical...(I was at the ER the other day..it cost me NOTHING!) You also have a retirement pension..after collecting 360 credits a guy can retire and collect 5k a month...and his wife/significant other...gets half that in addition. So a married couple would be taking in 7k a month almost. the extra boards aren't that bad...I sit in an alternative wirk board...am on call 2 days a week and get 4800 to sit on my butt the rest of the week. The airlines are broken.....sad really.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kfahmi (Post 1848947)

...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.

Just in case you're wondering...the required experience for airline pilots are all exactly the same regardless of equipment. There is no difference in the skill or experience needed to be the first officer of a Boeing 777 or an Embraer 145.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kfahmi (Post 1848947)

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?

1000 hours turbine? There is no such requirement. If there was it would be a massive chicken or the egg dilemma.

Corporate jobs generally do have higher experience requirements than any airline because they must answer to the highest authority of all, the insurance company, to which airlines are exempted.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kfahmi (Post 1848947)

However, given that the majors have more applicants than they can possibly handle...

That is the only (artificially created) reason why mainline can post artificial requirements.

The only reason major airlines hire from regional airlines is because they are there. It is in the mainline's best interest to encourage pilots to spend the first ten or fifteen years of their career there until they are a bit older. It's just a B scale for mainline. They can then hire older pilots who will likely not be there long enough to spend much time on twenty year pay (if they ever get there at all).

The regional B scale pay structure allows mainline to save massive amounts of money in pilot pay. This is why I keep saying that the regional airline system is bringing all pilot pay down, including mainline. That is why I spend time in these forums because talking to 20 year mainline veterans is like talking to a brick wall.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes (Post 1849038)

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

We have a few folks in their late 20s who each grossed over $160K last year. A solid healthcare plan is $400/month when purchased on the California insurance exchange. Also, they can deduct all sorts of expenses that salaried workers cannot, including commuting to our office.

I think our compensation is quite generous... Show me an airline pilot who pulls down that kind of money at that kind of age...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lambourne (Post 1849053)

Not sure why you are in this industry? Did you not understand how this worked when you were building all those hours to become an airline pilot? Did you never ask the question how am I paid and for what? Seriously, your lack of personal responsibility in this amazing.

And your assumptions, and putting words into my mouth, are equally amazing.

I understood full well what I was getting into. I don't depend on this job to pay my bills. So I'm not complaining about the pay. I'm simply asking why the system is the way it is. Because it's an archaic set of rules that in no way corresponds with how the vast majority of modern compensation agreements are structured.