Truth hurts all of you, doesn't it?
No. But your wildly simplistic assumptions sure do. And so does your assertion of wanting to have a factual discussion when you leave so many facts out.
Yes you may work in the industry, but in what capacity we still don’t know. In management you say. Of what? The McDonalds on concourse B?? No one is defaming you, so please spare us the arrogant posture and come down from your self-proclaimed position of expertise. Showing the errors in your assumptions is more accurate. Unless you work in our capacity you are no expert.
There was a time that ALPA insisted on and negotiated duty rigs. Any idea what that is? It meant that we get a minimum amount of pay for a specific amount of duty time (Not time away from base, BTW). The specific intention was to compel the company to use us as efficiently as possible and avoid long days with minimum productivity. Translation… If we are at work, we want to work. Guess what? The company didn’t want it, and took much of it away during concessionary bargaining.
Now, your assertions that pilots AVERAGE 170k is so far off it is comical. Try an average more like 100k-120k. No matter how you slice it, pilots can only fly 1000 hours per year of BLOCK TIME. And even this number is rarely reached. If the company planned to schedule pilots to that number, then when you factor in unplanned delays throughout the year, you would have half the pilots sitting at home for the last 2 to 3 weeks of the year, BY LAW. So let’s say 950 hours is a more reasonable annual target.
OK, so in the interest of seeing it from your perspective, let’s assume for the moment that layover time doesn’t count for anything. (I don’t agree with this premise. More on that later. But I’m trying to be objective here.) This leaves us with time “at work†and should be time a person is compensated for. Just like the Doctor who may only be in the operating room 10 hours per week, most reasonable people would consider the time he spends in the hospital or on the beeper as time he should be compensated for. When he is on the premises he has certain responsibilities even when he grabs a bite to eat in the cafeteria or is in between patients. After all many professions, doctors and pilots included, have collateral duties that do not directly use their hands on skill, but are required in order to do their job. Hence they are compensated for it in one way or another. So what we’re talking about here is duty time. A typical day can range anywhere from 4 to 16 hours of duty time, with the average over the course of a 4 day trip being about 8.75 hours. With a typical 4 on 3 off pattern we are talking about 35 hours per week. Much more realistic than your "part time" assertion, and again not including time away from home. Multiply this by 52 weeks and you come up with a number almost TWICE as much as the 950 hours a pilot gets paid for. (Or 151.666 hours per month, if you prefer) Are you starting to see a different picture yet?
Now on to the idea that layover time counts for nothing. When a businessman is away from home, will his company call at 11:00 at night and make him come in for a meeting, or is he still on a 9 to 5 and at the bar with his colleagues after that? Did you know that crews are subject to being called at any time during their layover to be reassigned? That’s right. From the moment we are on the premises for our first flight, until we park the plane on the last day, we are essentially on call. (Within certain legal limits of course) The company requires this, just like the reserve pilot who sits at home or in a crash pad and is available for assignment. Just like the fireman who sits in the firehouse playing cards. Should he get paid only for the time he puts water on a fire? Of course not. There is a financial value to this company flexibility, and people should be compensated to some degree for it. Airlines could not operate without reserves and the ability to reassign crews. It’s just the way the transportation business works. And it is just one of many examples of details you fail to consider or conveniently ignore in your amateur analysis, to support your inaccurate conclusions.
The pay structure is designed to account for many of these variables, and using the “fly 5 hours, get paid 5 hours†argument is overly simplistic. The system is by no means perfect, but if you want to restructure it, then you still have to consider 100% of the variables, not just the convenient 50%. Sure you could give everyone a 50% pay cut, but then you’d have to pay them for duty time not just block time. You’d also have to pay an override for time on call during layovers or long sits on call at the airport.
How about this… I show up at the airplane, close the door, start the engines, and push back. Now according to your assumptions I am on the clock with the passengers buckled in behind me. Now I can get the paperwork and do all my preflight preparation. About 45 minutes later we’ll be ready to taxi. Once we’re at the gate at our destination the doors stay closed with the engines running. We secure the airplane, debrief, pack up, shut down the engines, post flight, and then let everyone off after we’re off the clock. Of course the company can not call me until I show up on the next flight either an hour later or the next day. Once we are on the clock, with the doors closed and the engines running, the company can call to inform us that while we were partying at the Hilton last night our flight was cancelled and we are reassigned. Since this was the first time we could be reached, we are now to go back to the gate for our next assignment.
Obviously this fantasy scenario is ridiculous, but it just illustrates how your ideas are unworkable and unrealistic in the real world. If you want people to take you more seriously you need to let go of your rigid assumptions and try to be more objective. You get nowhere by judging others and being unwilling to learn from those with more direct knowledge than you. Crews work far more than you claim they do and get paid far less than you claim, whether you want to admit it or not. No it is not 40 hour per week manual labor like construction work for instance. But neither is being a fireman, lawyer, doctor, or what have you.
When it is structured properly, pay for block hours works because there SHOULD be a direct correlation between the hours flown and all of the collateral work time and on-call time. Hourly rates of pay are then adjusted upward to capture ALL of these factors. Theoretically as block time goes up or down, so does work time and time subject to reassignment. Considering the entire picture then, comparing these pay rates to the 40 hour work week becomes an apples to oranges comparison.
Also let’s not forget that like doctors, pilots are responsible peoples lives with every decision, and spend many years educating themselves and working long hours at low pay to gain the experience necessary to do their jobs! As much as you hate this comparison and wish it weren’t true, maybe you can put your emotions aside and face facts. You want to compare us to taxi drivers??! Sorry, but pilots transport hundreds more people, thousands of more miles than bus and taxi drivers. Just because we make it look easy doesn’t mean that it is. Let’s also not forget that taxi drivers can not crash their cars into buildings and take down the World Trade Center. Do I need to mention the many pilots who are now armed Federal Officers authorized to use deadly force, and voluntarily take on this additional responsibility, along with recurrent training, and personal time and effort with no additional pay to keep people like you safe? But we’ll just call that work ethics and personal pride… and BTW, you’re welcome.
And yes we do work in the hotel rooms. Ever hear of revisions? We are responsible for maintaining the currency of all our flight manuals because the company does not want to pay to do it themselves. We are also required by law to prepare many hours for semi-annual proficiency training. This is more work time we are not compensated for. Many of us do it in our hotel rooms so as not to take time away from our families. I could go on and on explaining to you all the minute details you fail to consider while judging a profession you know little about, but I doubt it will make a difference. While you are quick to accuse others of defaming you, you obviously are not objective enough, or are perhaps too emotional to consider any facts that do not support your preconceptions.
. Truth be told, we pilots have culpability in not setting reasonable minimum levels of industry pay. I'd agree that if something we to happen like a massive outbreak of a flu bug that killed everybody over 40 overnight, and affected no one else, the demand for Dr's would drop significantly. You could even argue that the market should sort it out and Dr pay should be cut until supply equals demand, but that would not excuse the incoherant ramblings of some GED fool who thinks Dr's "didn't deserve" the pay levels they got before the collapse. I don't mind someone making the market wages argument, but I do get the beak when some idiot spouts off about things he has no knowledge or understanding of.
