Bronner: Us Airways Pilots Weigh

[700UW]

Pilots for US Airways Group (otc: UAIRQ - news - people ) will accept pay cuts totaling 19.5%, and senior officers could lose job protections--if the pilots' union accepts the carrier's latest proposal.

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[wench]

whatasorrymferheis....

When will THE CONCESSIONS BE ENUF FOR THEM?

NEVER!

 

[AgentOrange]

When the company's costs are in-line with revenue provided and still allow a return for investors to take the risk of providing capital to the company.

How it compares to other airline pilots pay or the previous pay structure of the company is irrelevant 100%. The bankruptcy court rightfully does not care about that as it tries to sort out creditor terms.

US Air structurally has some issues that makes its revenue not as high as other carriers and its non-labor costs higher. I wouldn't say any of these are the direct fault of management so much as a consequence of circumstance:

* an inefficient hub system borne out of the days when hubs maximized per seat revenue and garnered enough O&D revenue per seat than it lost in competitive disadvantage in the connection segment;
* legacy pension costs;
* high fuel costs that could not be hedged given the company's current financial constraints;

Union members don't seem to understand that the magnitude of these disadvantages will not be made up by reducing a few vice presidents. It's not an easy thought process, but if they want to assess blame for finding themselves in such an unfavorable situation compared to say an AMR pilot then they need to look in the mirror to consider what brought them individually to US Air as employees in the first place.

Additionally, the union system that rewards seniority over individual performance disincents pilots from leaving to go to better-off airlines circumstantially and is not the fault of management at all.

 

[ClueByFour]

Newsflash: you could teach an entire track at any business school about what not to do based entirely upon U management past (and especially) present.

Really. In any other industry, these fools would be laughed at for the absolute inability to manage a McDonalds, much less a multibillion dollar enterprise.

You can attempt to spin it any other way, but that's the truth. The problem faced by the current crop of rejects running the show is that the employees are unwilling to take another one in the chops for this inept management team.

I'll bet if push came to shove the Barrett and HK at LUV could get concessions if they needed them--why? Because that labor force has a long history of data points to indicate such concessions would not be squandered.

The U labor force has the exact opposite.