Caveman

How is it that some CRJ pilots are compensated at Narrow Body rates?

How do airlines still post quarterly profits after offering 200 and 300% narrow body pay incentives to cover peak holiday staffing?

FAs, Dispatchers, and Mx all are or have been compensated at or above thier wide body peer groups at SWA. How is that SWA can still be profitable?

sailingfun

They're not making money at those rates. That is why the aircraft are going away over time.

NuGuy

It's important to understand the 1:1 after 10 hours duty at DAL is not a rig. The duty rig doesn't change to 1:1 after 10, and there's no offset with other forms of pay.

If you're on duty more than 10 hours (including report and release), it is an additional 1 hour pay, minute per minute, actual or scheduled, in addition to all other forms of pay. For reserves, it's above their guarantee.

sailingfun

You made 2.3 billion in 2019. Your average pilot earned 245,000 a year. How many pilots did you have?

Caveman

No Sir. That is actually incorrect. Pilot casm has very little to do with an airlines ability to be profitable.

What is your airlines pilot casm per seat mile?

Lewbronski

Where are you going with this? Are you attempting to make the "golden goose" argument? Are you arguing that demanding WB rates is "unreasonable"? What's your point?

Stitches

If memory serves we were between 9000-9500 in 2019. We are just under 10,500 now.

I think there are 500+ who took early retirement and are getting 47tfp/month for another 3 years. It’s easy to forget about those guys but they are almost all topped out Captains and the company is still forecasting a solid profit this year despite the extra costs and lingering effects of the Christmas meltdown.

waterskisabersw

And if every passenger that traveled that year had paid an extra $14 per one way fare, they could have doubled that profit margin. Revenue management is a complicated business, of course, and passengers are notoriously price conscious, but how much has inflation gone up over the last few years? Would they notice a $14 increase now? That would have doubled pilot pay and then some.

As to your other unsourced argument about the Delta CEO claiming the $500 777 rate would drive an unsustainable $400 737 rate: we don't live in the same world any more. Not even close.

Ways that today is different (I can't believe I have to say this to an airline professional):

• We had over a dozen major carriers
• We had dozens upon dozens of regional carriers to whipsaw
• We did not have the same ancillary revenue streams
• We did not have the unbundling phenomenon
• We did not have rampant inflation
• We did not have the tightest pilot job market in history driving massive pilot wage inflation
• We had a relatively healthy GA where it didn't cost a home mortgage to enter this industry
• We had dozens of pathways to get to airline hiring minimums
• We didn't have the massive incentives from banks paying hundreds of millions of dollars per year to airlines to partner with their credit cards
• We did not have the ATP rule
• We had rates of pay that we still haven't met after 23 years after taking inflation into account
• You purportedly quoted a CEO who was speaking in a negotiating environment, and so was almost certainly lying

The number of seats/premium seats argument obfuscates the real metric: RASM.

The fact of the matter is that SWA and Delta adjusted RASMs are exceptionally close (about 6% off). They can afford it. And the SWA CASM also reflects the fact that the company alleges that it has already been setting money to account for the increase in employee wages they're expecting. They're not putting away enough, because they're not going to get away with the number they think they'll get out of us, but they are already putting aside huge quantities of cash to at least dampen the blow to the earnings when we eventually get a contract.

Another related question for you: what was SWA's profit in 2015, where we were under an abysmal low old contract compared to 2017, where we spent the full year on a new contract that cost them over a billion dollars a year more?

I'll give you a hint. SWA profits increased every year between 2015 and 2017

Lewbronski

Thanks Waterski! I think you pretty much refuted the "golden goose" argument that Sailingfun was attempting to resurrect.

As to the "reasonability" argument that Sailingfun may have been trying to raise, reasonability under the RLA has very little to do with the demands either side is making. Reasonability is mostly about how the two sides to a dispute conduct themselves during bargaining. Are they showing up? Have they demonstrated an openness to listen to the other side? Have they demonstrated a desire to come to an agreement versus just going through the motions?

We don't have to justify our contractual demands with RASM, CASM, ROIC, PE ratio, share price, "affordability," or any other metric you may want to point to. Our bargaining strength, determined by our economic power as a labor group, determines what we can achieve in contractual terms. The government, via the RLA, doesn't put a cap on it.

In fact, in the 1943 US Supreme Court case, Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis V. Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, Justice Jackson, speaking for the court’s majority, wrote:
Said succinctly in a later 1952 Supreme Court case (Labor Board v. American Ins. Co) regarding good faith bargaining, the federal government “may not, either directly or indirectly, compel concessions or otherwise sit in judgment upon the substantive terms of collective bargaining agreements.” Instead, quoting from the 1988 case, Independent Federation of Flight Attendants v. TWA,
Not that I'm saying it'd be wise, but we could even ask for rates or other terms that would bankrupt that company and it wouldn't violate the RLA's reasonability clause. From the 1973 case, REA Express, Inc. v. BROTHERHOOD OF RAILWAY, ETC:

flyguy81

Well that’s even better than I remember. Def need this with longer turn times and reroutes.