Please read Flying the Line”. It explains how pilot pay evolved and how the decision to tie pilot pay to productivity (Weight and Speed) was the key to success.

 

It's really an excellent read, you won't get an argument from me on that. And it's an excellent look at how the unions formed and how and why the seniority and pay structure formed.

But don't you think that things have changed since 1982 and May of 2000, respectively? I mean, I even made a whole post about what is different now from 2000 in this very thread.

It's important to respect history, but it's also important to learn to evolve from history. Principals learned and executed from both Flying the Line volumes have served us well, but they've also not stood the test of time in literally hundreds of way.

Do I need another bullet point list?

I'll keep this one succinct:

• The regional boom of the aughts.

 

So, just so we are clear here, Sailingfun has taken a break from sowing FUD on the United forums to come over here and do the same?
Stay in your lane, bro. We've got this. Comparing the career of a SWA pilot to a legacy pilot is apples to pineapples. Maybe, just possibly, we get the dynamics and history of the career and can handle our own negotiation. We don't need someone who isn't even flying the line anymore to come over here and tell us how to lower our expectations. We have had our own guys do that for a few decades.

 

It's a great read, glad it's getting around in our pilot group

 

I fail to understand why any of you are arguing with and engaging a known surrender monkey.

 

IMO, it's not for him. He's a lost cause.

It's for the guys in our pilot group and our profession who may read through these threads and not know much better. They may be swayed by seeing his rationalizations for degrading our profession shot down.

 

I am the guy who suggested that are minimum contract value at signing should be 1 billion for the first year, 1.2 and 1.4 in years 2 and 3. What did we actually get? 760 million for all 3 years or 21% of my minimum. Who surrendered?

 

You are kind of missing my point. Trying to argue weight and speed are no longer relevant hurts the profession. Average aircraft size is trending up rapidly and we may see supersonic airliners at some point. Building new airports in the US is almost impossible.
Your argument as a SW pilot on why you deserve a premium over the big 3 for 737 pay should center on productivity. You are far more productive than the big 3 and should be compensated for that.

 

It is important to recognize that as seat density increases, the type of aircraft is less important. For example, our -800 holds the same number of pax as USAir and TWA used to put on the 757.

Just as the RJ was used as a tool to replace mainline wages and benefits with a low cost alternative (replacing DC9, Bac 1-11, Fokker 100, 737-200) the use of slimline seats and high density cabins to allow similar revenue from a smaller aircraft has also lowered crew costs as the 737 was traditionally a lower pay rate than the 757.

There should be higher rates as the company is able to produce more revenue from the aircraft.

I still don’t think pay is the most important thing we should be looking to address in this contract, but that doesn’t mean I want us to roll over on it either.

 

...
You continue to disprove your own points, this time in one post.

My point is that the metric of aircraft size is correlation, not causation. It's about risk and expense to become a pilot, the associated drawbacks of this profession (and willingness of new generations to have the lack of work-life balance required of it), the other opportunities available for the same or similar risk, and the revenue generated.

Average aircraft capacity may indeed be rising (as it has for the past 120 years), but that, in general, has nothing to do with the current trend of rising salaries (with the exception of supply/demand component of the pilot population). Let me ask you this: have salaries increased in tandem with the level of capacity or speed increases over the past 70-120 years? Of course not. What it has correlated to are changes to the factors I listed above.

As you said, there are many variables that change the amount of revenue generation enabled by having pilots (or any work group). Ancillary fees from add-ons, banking contracts, productivity, fares, premium services, government contracts (EAS, DoD), interline, etc. Yes, those numbers can all be affected by the "butt in seats" number, but there are many ways to come to that *ASM* number. They are also not inextricably tied to the ASM number, hence the prefect example of why we're seeing the huge influx of money into regional pilot contracts.

The value the regionals bring isn't necessarily tied to the revenue generated by their singular flight from xxx-hub, but is heavily influenced by the revenue they bring to the subsequent hub-hüb flight. That's why the legacies are paying through the nose to keep their regional feed.

Should regional pilots be paid 1/4-1/5 of widebody pilots because the seat count is 1/4-1/5 the size of an A350? Of course not, because the barriers to entry are fundamentally identical, the factors determining job satisfaction are similar, and the value that those flights bring to their partner airline is well above the value of their singular flight. In fact, as you know, without that feed, the economics of the subsequent hub-hüb flight are likely irreparably harmed without the existence of the feed.

As a side note, this is also a major reason why SWA doesn't do long haul flying (along with the fact that we can't take foreign currency ). We have no true feed since we base all of our flying on point to point markets. We could likely cobble together a few markets based solely on O&D demand, or with the limited catchment of some larger focus city's markets, but at this point, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

That's besides the point though. The point is that it's all about what value pilots bring to the airline, how many pilots you have to choose from, what other viable options pilots have available to them, and what avenues the airline has to offset cost with revenue.

All of those metrics have changed drastically since the smoke filled rooms of the ALPA founders, and, for that matter, since the furiously typed keyboard of Flying the Line I/II.