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On 3/3/2003 6:33:35 PM MrMarky wrote:
About a month ago I was departing from LAS on Southwest. We were taxiing to the end of the runway on a parallel straight taxiway, in daylight with dry conditions.
I am pretty good at accurately estimating speeds and we were going fast. I even commented on it to the person next to me. I would estimate our taxi speed at 60mph, minimum!
I have never taxied at anywhere near the speed we were going. Burbank isn't the only place the WN Cowboys haul A$$. Under the circumstances in this case I would not say that safety was compromised but we were really cooking!!
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What many do not know is that LUV pilots and f/a's are paid on a piecerate, that is, rather than being paid by the hour, they are paid by the mile.
Pay is done on the basis of a certain $amount per "trip" and a trip is defined as something like 221 miles.
Apparently Alaska f/a's and pilots operate on a similar basis.
U and most of the other majors are paid by the hour (at least for the time between door close to door open). (In other words, workin' fer free while doing the checklist, the walk around, checking the emergency equipment, handling boarding and such...)
Anyway, the LUV approach yields a constant speedup in the workplace, which is why they hotdog around the runways. Helps get those planes turned around, but I'd be willing to bet it is pretty stressful on the pilots and f/a's, and I can't imagine it doesn't sometimes lead to corners being cut on safety! (Remember it was LUV that attempted to get permission to do pushback while pax were still being seated some years ago--source: Petzinger)
All that said, I hope the U pilots give management a thing or two to think about!
In solidarity with U pilots,
-Airlineorphan