mwereplanes said:
Let me tell you my idea. Pay the pilots a salary for, say, 16 days of work. Whatever is negotiated. Then the company schedules as they see fit. If they want you to sit in CLT for 4 hours between flights so be it. If they want to fly you from PIT to CLE and sit you for 4 days so be it. There are a million ways to get more productivity out of pilots and FA's. But the biggest way is to schedule more efficiently. That is how LUV and JetBlue have more productive flight crews. The pilots are not preventing U from scheduling like LUV. Hubbing is doing that. Pay us a salary. Then fly us as you see fit. There is not a pilot around that would prefer sitting to flying. And if you want a true comparison of how productive U's pilots are you need to compare us to DAL, CAL, AMR, NWA, or UAL. Apples to apples for comparison purposes. If we flew linear like LUV then you would see how much more productive we would be with the present work rules.
mr
In a letter to the pilots from the PHL Captain Representative of ALPA, he states:
"... After the announcement of Southwest's arrival in PHL, management began to crank up the rhetoric of labor costs being the problem. Interestingly, our labor costs are 38 percent of total costs at USAirways -- Southwest's are 40 percent. Our pilot costs are 13 percent -- Southwest's are 12 percent. Our 737 captains make $151/hour -- Southwest's make $162/hour.
In 1998 this company made a $1B profit without a single SJ. Delta and Continental, which had access to lots of SJs, made less than we did. An EMB 170/175 costs about as much as an A-319 but has 45 fewer seats. The break-even load factor on that aircraft will be high. In an of themselves, SJs are not the answer.
If we all took a 20 percent pay cut, that would generate approximately $100M in savings. CFO Cohen early last year termed $50M as "noise". In and of themselves, labor costs have reached a level where they are no longer the answer.
Ample tools have been given to management -- it is now up to them."
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There are Pilots at USAirways who fly as many or more hard hours as a Southwest Pilot. The current labor contract doesn't seem to be the restrictive cause of effective Pilot scheduling here. Then, there are the majority of USAirways pilots who fly fewer hard hours than Southwest pilots. Again it's not the Contract which is restricting effective scheduling. The fact is the Company is not generating the same Aircraft utilization as Southwest. When Aircraft sit - Pilots sit. When Aircraft fly - pilots fly. It's as simple as can be stated.
The most important deception in the Comparisons Management would make is how it productively schedules its Pilots. According to current existing contract and Federal Aviation Limitations in place at all Airlines, a Pilot is typically scheduled by Management to only fly 60% to 70% of what this Pilot at USAirways could have, both legally and contractually. The current Contracts are not holding Management back from better Pilot utilization. The fact is they are not managing their assets well. It’s a Business Model and Operational Model Problem – Functions of Management.
The current Operational Model schedules Pilots to sit 4 hours between flights. The current Operational Model schedules Pilots to work on day one of a 4-day trip paring, the second day is spent sitting in a Hotel (unproductive), the third and fourth day work for hard time. Southwest doesn’t schedule in such a manner. Another trip pairing will schedule a pilot to work day one, two and three for hard time, then day four is spent mostly at the Hotel until late into the evening, then the Pilot flys one leg to his domicile to complete his trip paring. Southwest doesn’t schedule in such a manner. None of these examples of trip pairings exist at Southwest. Scheduling is a function of Airline Management. There are no restrictions in current contracts for Pilots to work harder.
The Pilots want to work more efficiently. And they put pressure on the company to do so. How? USAirways pilots have a contract which states simply that the Company has an option... Either work the Pilot hard while he’s away from home or if you are going to let him sit around doing nothing then pay him a minimum amount while he’s on the road away form home and far from his family. Miraculously, with old contracts, the Company used to schedule pilots more effectively to reduce the idle claim time for Pilots. Historically, during contract renegotiations, as the Pilots have given up these minimum guaranteed requirements for pay, the company has scheduled less and less efficiently. The company promised to schedule Pilots more effectively. They did not. The less restrictive the contractual minimum guaranteed pay, the less efficiently Management scheduled pilots. This is not the Case at Southwest. Pilot resources are used more effectively by Management. USAirways Pilots want to work, Management is lost on how to make it happen.
So what is the company driving at with these new requests for contract concessions? Their using rhetoric to give you a magician’s slight of hand. It’s not pilot efficiency they want more of. The current contract allows a pilot to fly for nothing but hard pay time. What the Company wants is less pay to compensate for the ongoing lack of Operational Management and Business Model Reform. They want Pilots to serve more time on duty, away from home, away from family, but... without the obligation to pay him for an inability to use this resource as efficient as Southwest Management. Like the example above, a pilot may spend an entire day in a Hotel, in the middle of a trip paring, without pay. That’s not the Southwest Model management speaks of, which you might have missed with the slight of hand.
All of you are intelligent. You know the truth of this issue. Pilots can't just gather a group of random people from the street, usher them onto an idle aircraft they happen to find sitting in a state of wasteful mismanagement and take them for an Airplane Ride. No... the pilots have to be scheduled onto Trip Parings which are constructed by the Company according to how many Flight Hours -- How may Available Seat Miles, are generated. It’s a matter of asset Management. It's not Pilot's wanting something for nothing.
