It’s been quite a while since the Continental United merger was announced and pilots from both sides are *still* negotiating their integration.   This stands in stark contrast to the SWA / Airtran deal announced a few days ago and completed in far less time than the ContiUnited merger has been going on.  It’s been over a year now since the ContiUnited merger was announced.

This is about pay, seniority and job security.  Both sides of the table have given up significant pay over the past 10 years or so and both want a raise that shares in the wealth.  United has more senior pilots and that’s a threat to Continental pilots.  Continental pilots have enjoyed quite a bit of job security as a result of scope clauses that have limited Continental to using regional airlines for 50 seat missions or less. 

Mostly, neither side wants to budge.  I think the Continental pilots have viewed this merger as more threatening than any anticipated.  Despite the appearance of this being Continental with the United name to the public, more and more of the United model has been retained.  Any attempts to “outsource” Continental flying to United has been stopped in courtroom skirmishes by Continental pilots who don’t want to see regional jets flying *their* routes. 

So what breaks the impasse?  It’s hard to say.  There isn’t much One Love going on here despite the fact that both are represented by ALPA.  United pilots are very militant and Continental pilots are very concerned.  Failure to reach an agreement on much of anything here has caused these talks to look stagnant. 

ContiUnited can’t start benefiting from this merger until it has a merged single certificate as an airline and until it can flow flight crews between both airlines.  That day isn’t in sight as of today. 

Furthermore, management can’t afford to agree to an unsustainable raise for both sides given the current economic climate.  So there are few incentives that management can offer to stimulate an agreement among the pilots. 

Is this going to be another US Airways / America West problem?  Right now, I don’t think so.  It already doesn’t represent the smooth transition that Delta and Northwest enjoyed but it can be wrung out.   The problem here is that there is no momentum.  Continental pilots felt Continental was doing just fine on its own and that they were doing better than most pilots out there.  United pilots are out “to get theirs” at almost any cost.  Someone, somewhere, has to find something for both parties to agree upon and get some momentum going for an agreement.

Continuing these talks for years or coming to an agreement that falls apart hurts the pilots the most.  Senior Continental pilots are going to need to have some assurances with respect to seniority that go beyond “date of hire” integration.  Pay is the easy part here.  Job security and seniority are the hard parts.  Seniority in particular because a Continental pilot that is, say, bumped from his job as a Captain on a 777 stands to lose quite a bit of pay. 

I suspect we’ll see these jobs “fenced” at the airlines with a date sometime in the near future (3 to 5 years) of breaking down those fences so that pilots can bid for jobs they want on each other’s equipment. 

How does all of this happen?  It should happen with Jeff Smisek, CEO of ContiUnited.  It’s always dangerous for  a company leader to get directly involved but he needs to find a way of assuring both sides and an incentive for them to agree upon something.  That incentive is going to cost but the sooner he finds it, the sooner United starts making consistent profits.

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Just weeks ago, Alaska Airlines went paperless in their cockpit with respect to their flight manuals by issuing iPads to their pilots.  They also expect to replace their flight charts by adding those to the iPads as well.

Now American Airlines is moving a step forward with that by testing iPads to replace pilots charts.  All of this is being done under the FAA’s Electronic Flight Bag program and it’s good for everyone involved.

The move saves airlines big money on paying for paper chart updates and saves big weight on the aircraft because each pilot carries as much as 30lbs of paper in manuals and charts.  Multiply that by the number of pilots on board and it really can save fuel costs too.

And I like it because it’s time to use technology like this more.  Are the iPads the right tool?  Why not?  They are fairly robust, long lived in battery life and much easier to carry.  But if the iPad proves not to be quite robust enough, Panasonic makes a fully ruggedized tablet PC now and if it is good enough for the military, it’s certainly good enough for a pilot.

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Here is the basic summary:  The plane appears to have lost indications for speed in flight (although not in turbulence) while the Captain was taking a rest period.  The two inflight pilots systematically worked the problems but without much luck and resulting in a stall.  The captain did not take control.  The pilots appear to have “pulled up” instead of nosing over despite stall indications that were recorded.  The aircraft had gone into “alternate law” which does *not* prevent the aircraft from being flown into dangerous conditions.  The first read is that the pilots screwed up.

What gets ignored is that it also appears that the pitot tube(s) that were recording the speed of the aircraft did in fact freeze up which caused a loss of speed indication on the primary flight displays.  At their altitude, speed is a very fine envelope of conditions.  It’s possible to go too slow and too fast and the higher you go, the narrower the difference is between the two conditions.

The very puzzling thing is that 3 very, very experienced A330 pilots appear to have attempted to “pull up” (i.e. go nose up which would *slow* the plane) when things began to happen instead of pushing their nose down which would recover from a stall.  It’s always sporty recovering a stall in a large airliner but it *is* something one trains for. 

So, is it the pilots?  They may have perhaps contributed to their problem, yes.  But their actions make me wonder what information they were seeing on their backup instrumentation.  In other words, did they realize they were in a stall?  The A330 has no stick shaker and, instead, has a loud audible warning for a stall.  Presumably this could be heard on the cockpit voice record. 

The way this happened is just a bit too eery still.  With the altitude they had, there was nominally plenty of height to recover from problems.  Air France isn’t Colgan Air and they do train their pilots very, very well.  Their actions may suggest that they were reading their conditions very differently from what they actually were. 

The next step is to take this into a simulator and starting seeing and experiencing what happened and try to figure out the “why” of what happened.  This “ruling” is by no means definitive or informative necessarily.

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ContiUnited just lost a ruling in arbritration that will forbid it from marketing flights on United Express aircraft with greater than 50 seats as Continental flights.  Continental had planned to have United Express fly routes out of Continental hubs in Houston, Newark and Cleveland in the new year. 

Arbitrator Richard Bloch ruled that that can’t be done as it would be a violation of the collective bargaining agreement in place with Continental pilots.  While Continetal and United are a merged company named United now, the pilots and flight crew are still flying as two different companies and will be for at least another year.

This is a pretty big blow to Jeff Smisek, CEO of United, and it was, perhaps, a bit bold of him to try to make this move without buy-in from the Continental pilots.  Continental has been constrained for years with their contract with their pilots on regional jet flying and it needed those rules relaxed in order to compete with other airlines.

United needs to get their labor ducks in order before attempting to press on with other controversial things such as this.

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United Airlines (ContiUnited aka Continental and United Airlines merged) has a problem.   Continental pilots have enjoyed one of the most restrictive scope clauses in the industry so far and United pilots have seen quite a bit of mainline flying move from their group to being outsourced to regional airlines flying the CRJ-700/900.   Both parties are unhappy with outsourcing the flying and both see the merger and need for a new contract as the perfect opportunity to gain ground on this issue.

At the same time, United needs to keep its costs in line with rivals Delta and American Airlines and, if possible, lower.  To do that under the present day model, that means outsourcing even more flying to regional airlines.

As usual, I would suggest that both parties need to meet in the middle a bit.  Pilots (and other flight crew) could stand to permit lower wagese for this “regional” flying to keep it “in house”.  United needs to recognize that this is about job security and these pilots want some assurance that their seniority means something in bad times.  Neither party is going to get what they want or even a majority of what they want. 

And if this conflict blooms into a multi-year negotiation, things won’t be good for either side.  Pilots will lose out on salary increase opportunities and United will lose out on the synergies that this merger is supposed to provide. 

One solution could be to retain the 50 seat Continental scope clause but pilots permit a lower entry level wage for 51+ seat aircraft or even perhaps a “B” wage scale until a pilot moves into generally accepted mainline aircraft (say 125+ seats.)  The pilots could be permitted to use their seniority to retain a job in the lower pay scale in the event of a downturn and bad times displacing only the newest pilots and at the same time the airline could benefit from being able to use regional airlines for truly regional flying. 

CEO Jeff Smisek would be wise to get creative rather than tough here.  This is a real obstacle to realizing the benefits of his merger.

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When the Air Transport Association offers nothing much but criticism of new pilot fatigue rules, I have to call foul.  Pilot (and cabin crew fatigue) is something that has gotten worse and worse, not better over the past few decades.  In the drive to increase productivity, union rules and contracts have been renegotiated over and over resulting in less and less rest for crew members.

There was a time when getting that increased productivity was a reasonable thing because other factors affecting fatigue weren’t nearly the issues they are today.  One of the biggest issues is commuting and its a necessary evil in the airline world.  Pilots often have to commute from their home to their home base and that can mean flights anywhere from a short hop to a transcontinental flight. 

When that home base is stable, arranging and managing those commutes can be done.  However, home bases are often anything but stable these days as airlines have expanded, contracted, expanded, merged and even grown into entirely new regions.  Pilots are being moved around like inanimate objects and that leads to fatigue.  Fatigue doesn’t just come from lack of sleep.  It comes from commuting, stress, poor food and difficult schedules.  

This stuff just has to be managed better and I throw a red flag at the ATA.  Don’t just criticize, solve the problem.  Being a player in getting this issue solved.  Behaving as if nothing has changed over the past 2 decades is sticking your heads in the ground just as badly if not worse than the unions have at times.  Find ways to offer some stability and productivity and get those people better rested.  We’ve had one air disaster that clearly saw fatigue playing a role.  The fact that it was a small commuter aircraft that time doesn’t mean it won’t be a large widebody next time. 

I’ll add this:  unions need to get smart.  Demanding everything in terms of rest, wages, etc without finding a way to offer more productivity is a losing game and puts you in the penalty box with the ATA.  If you don’t find a way to come to some understanding on this, it will fall to the government and not a single person out there will find the solution satisfying or effective.

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Southwest has been pretty candid with people attending the Southwest media day and has made a number of comments and announcements that offer more clarity than we’ve seen in a while.

First up:  Southwest and Volaris Airlines will begin interlining on December 1st.  This is quicker than I would have guessed based on the radio silence we’ve heard on this subject for months now.  It’s not a codeshare because you won’t be able to buy a Southwest ticket to fly on a Volaris flight.  You will, however, be able to seemlessly transition between a Southwest flight and a Volaris flight to Mexico.  You wouldn’t be able to do codeshares at present anyway since Mexico’s air traffic system got downgraded to a Category 2 recently. 

Southwest sees the seniority list integration between its pilots and Airtran pilots as their number one issue.  I agree.  The rational people out there would have you believe that Airtran pilots should be happy no matter what since it is almost guaranteed that they’ll get a pay raise with this merger.  Sadly, rational thought doesn’t enter into the equation when it comes to these discussions.  In addition, pay raises aren’t the only factor when it comes to seniority.  Seniority also determines the type of aircraft you’ll fly and where you’ll be based out of.   I doubt it will be a “date of hire” integration and I doubt it will be a mere stapling integration either.  There will probably be some sort of weighted integration and possibly jobs in the ATL area (and perhaps a few other bases) will be “fenced” off for Airtran pilots for a period of time. 

Southwest says it will be charging $5 for WiFi access on its aircraft.  This is pretty cheap compared to the fees for Aircell on other airlines.  Apparently Southwest has done their homework and determined that’s the sweet spot for maximizing “take” on each flight.  There will be no graduated fee for varying durations of flights.  Southwest doesn’t know what it will do with Airtran aircraft equipped with Aircell because they don’t know what those contracts look like yet and they won’t until the merger is consummated.  I suspect that Aircell will remain in place until those contracts expire and then they will be replaced with R0w44 systems to harmonize the fleet.  That would be a good news for Row44 who hasn’t gained much in the way of market share when compared to Aircell.

Finally, Southwest thinks Atlanta could quickly become its biggest city once it has finished its merger with Airtran.  Las Vegas currently is the largest but Southwest execs see lots of additional route opportunity in Atlanta already.  They’ve identified at least 2 dozen new destinations that could be served and Atlanta is already pretty big for Airtran.  Look for more frequency and a net gain on routes once Southwest really takes over.

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The pilots of Continental and United Airlines have decided to throw a whopper on the table and see if the stink gets them anywhere in their negotiations for a unified pilots’ contract for the proposed ContiUnited merger.  They want an end to all outsourcing of flights.  In other words, they want ContiUnited pilots to fly all the flights.

Never. Gonna. Happen.

Pilots want job security and I can’t blame them.  The investment in both time and money towards their career makes them much more tied to an airline to earn a living than most people experience in their lives.  The seniority system just compounds that issue for them even more. 

But airlines aren’t going to agree to eliminating regional airline partners for their flying.  They can’t.  It isn’t economically viable at the labor rates insisted upon by unions of these legacy airlines.

Each part could give a little on this.  Regional airlines don’t offer just cheap pilots.  They offer flexibility and less expensive flight attendants and even less expensive maintenance.   Both parties need to find a way to offer employees better job security in exchange for more competitive costs.

Given that this is most important for pilots, it seems to me that the SuperLegacy airlines might be better served by “leasing” not only their aircraft but their employees to these regional airlines in down times.  In other words, craft an agreement that allows the SuperLegacy pilots to displace the regional partner pilots when their laid off.  Lease those pilots at the regional partner rate and, at the least, preserve some job security. 

It’s one way to work within the seniority system.  A system that, frankly, pilot unions are using to make their membership become indentured to airines.  It’s a system that I disagree with but if you must preserve it, at least find some flexibility within it.

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Southwest Airlines admits it is considering adding a bigger 737 to its fleet and its the 737-800 that it is interested in.  The 737-800 would give the airline more revenue opportunity used in and out of airports that have slot restrictions such as La Guardia or on routes with ever increasing density but where frequency isn’t justified.

Current SWA aircraft, the 737-300 and 737-700 carry 137 passengers and a 737-800 would probably carry about 175 people in a Southwest configuration.  That’s an additional a potential increase of 38 passengers for those critical routes with costs that wouldn’t be all that much more than their current costs.  A little bit more fuel and an additional flight attendant is all that is really required.  That spells more profit.

And I like the idea.  Frankly, I think Southwest could stand to add all 3 models of 737 to their fleet and I think they ought to seriously examine the potential of Hawaii and trans-continental flights.  But, then, I also think they could stand to look at smaller aircraft for regional routes with high frequency too.  It’s going to be the only way they can continue growth in the future.

However, don’t go thinking you’re going to see a 737-800 in SWA colours next year either.  Southwest likes to mull decisions like this for quite a while and it would require negotiating amendments to their union contracts with the pilots and flight attendants at minimum. 

Take note here, SWA pilots and FA’s, here is your chance to be industry game changers again.  Pilots, you shouldn’t ask for a dime more to fly these aircraft.  They require no extra effort on your part and it keeps the flying in your house, not SWA codeshare partners’.  Flight Attendants, the same goes for you.  The passenger count per flight attendant actually *drops* by two passengers with these aircraft.  Be game players and make this happen.  It costs neither union anything to make this work and most likely will add profitability to the company as well as future stability to your jobs. 

This really is win-win.  Get greedy and it is the beginning of a long end to SWA.

If SWA does adopt this idea, expect aircraft in the fleet 12 to 24 months after the decision is announced.

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The Chicago Tribune has THIS story on American Airlines and their desire to lower the amount of fuel being carried as reserve on an average flight.  In short, AA has discovered that it is carrying an excessive amount of reserve fuel on the average flight.  What’s excessive?  Some aircraft are landing with almost twice the amount mandated by the FAA and let me point out that the FAA is a pretty conservative organization.

Predictably, American pilots see this as an instrusion on their authority and a dangerous path.   But is it?  Currently, the FAA mandates that you have 45 minutes of fuel reserves and that’s worked very,  very well over the years.  Interestingly enough, American itself requires 65 minutes of fuel reserves but the aircraft are landing with an average of 92 minutes of fuel reserves and that’s a problem. 

Why?  Because when you carry more fuel, you burn more fuel to carry that extra weight.  All American wants to do is get their average down much more closely to their mandated reserve number of 65 minutes.  Doing so would save them the cost of carry 30 extra minutes of fuel, which over the course of a year in a fleet of over 600 aircraft will translate into millions of dollars of savings. 

Captains, traditionially with final say on what fuel they’ll require for a flight, say that this is an intrustion on their authority and potentially puts them into the position of being reprimanded or fired if they do it too often because the airline wants pilots to justify extra fuel by filling out a form.   I think the pilots union would love for this to be another bone of contention between pilots and the company. 

However, every airline should be doing this for a variety of reasons.  First, we really do know how much fuel a typical flight should carry and we know that by route and model of aircraft and the process for figuring this out is genuine science and genuinely accurate.   Airlines do *not* want their flights to routinely lack enough of fuel that causes diversions, trust me.  Every flight that has to stop and refuel represents a flight that just lost a spectacular amount of money.

Does AA’s form make the process potentially punitive?  Yes, I think it does and I think it should.   American’s pilots are, quite literally, the best, most experienced pilot corps in the world.  The fact that AA’s average has gone up to 92 minutes of fuel left upon landing is shameful for those pilots.  They should be nailing the company average 10 months out of 12 and they’re not getting close.  So, yes, I think pilots should justify loading more fuel and if they’re inappropriately loading too much fuel, yes, I think they should be counseled on that too. 

Just like any other employee today in America’s workplaces who is wasteful and inefficient.

There are legitimate reasons to add additional fuel before leaving.  If an airport is particularly congested or experiencing long delays, a pilot will add extra fuel for taxi purposes.  If a flight route suddenly has developing weather crossing it, a pilot may add some additional fuel to fly around the weather.  There are other legitimate reasons as well and there is no reason why pilots can’t simply document their reasons for increasing their fuel reserves on a particular flight.

US Airways did this a couple of years ago and, yes, a few pilots were sent for extra training and counseling after repeatedly adding more fuel than necessary for flights.  Ultimately, US Airways and the pilots came to an agreement on how to work out those conflicts and the airline now saves money by meeting its reserve goals (also in excess of FAA minimums). 

This conflict is a union conflict, not a safety conflict.  More than a decade ago when fuel prices suddenly rose significantly, all Southwest Airlines had to do was communicate to their flight dispatchers and pilots that they needed to save more fuel and suddenly better, more fuel efficient altitudes were being planned and pilots were being exceptionally aggressive in requesting higher altitudes and more direct approaches to airports to save that money.  Safety wasn’t compromised and millions of dollars were saved.  If American has the most experienced crew of pilots, Southwest probably has the second most experienced crew.

At the end of the day, saving this money is essential for success in the airline world.  Pilots not only shouldn’t be pushing back on this idea, they should be embracing it and working even harder to find places for their airline to remain competitive.

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Continental has announced that 15 of about 150 pilots furloughed in 2008 will be recalled back to the company.  Another 100 who took voluntary leave will also be coming back.  Supposedly this is because of some planned growth on Continental’s part including the addition of 2 new Boeing 777 aircraft in the near future. 

 It’s a good piece of news both for these pilots and the industry.  Delta has announced it will be hiring some additional pilots as well. 

But the Continental news has me wondering even more about how Continental and United pilots will integrate their seniority.  If I were a betting man, I would bet that United pilots have a higher average seniority and that means a seniority merge could result in a lot of Continental pilots getting bumped back down.  Seniority determines pay so it will be a contentious issue.  Sadly, neither group has someone like Delta ALPA leader Lee Moak to guide them through in a reasonable way.

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Today, part 2 in my views on whether or not we’ll see a real “Ryanair” style airline here in the United States.

Watch what you fly here.  The most recent LCC entrants here have bought Airbus.  No real surprise as Airbus likes to make a heck of a deal on an aircraft for new airlines in the hopes they’ll have the “in” for future orders if that airline succeeds.  

Boeing isn’t too interested in that.  They want to see a solid business plan and a real possibility of success.  What’s more, big orders aren’t the enticement they once were for Boeing.  Boeing got burned on a few of those deals with Ryanair being the most notable since it allowed Ryanair to buy aircraft, fly them for a couple of years and sell them at a profit.  Boeing isn’t going to let that happen again any time soon.

Is Airbus the right aircraft?  Yes.  No.  Maybe.  I kind of think not.  I think it is well suited to the jetBlue and Virgin America airlines of this country because they can support that upgraded service product nicely.   That said, those airlines would have done just as well with Boeing aircraft.  In fact, jetBlue went with Airbus because Boeing refused to offer a decent price for a decent order.  

But Airbus doesn’t strike me as quite the right choice for an LCC.  They’re a bit higher off the ground, have a little worse operational dispatch rate and don’t always have the best range vs weight ration for certain routes.   Yes, they’re a family of aircraft that offers a range of size that captain can fly across the type range. 

Boeing seems better.  Supported here in the United States, you have better access to mechanics, parts and plenty of maintenance contractors to keep you going.  They’re a little bit closer to the ground, a little easier to turn around and have a little bit better dispatch rate.  In addition, their range of capacities is a little bit better for routes and virtually every model has trans-continental capability now without being weight restricted. 

The model I would look long and hard at isn’t either of those.  I think a new LCC carrier trying to emulate Ryanair ought to take a serious look at the Embraer 170/190 aircraft.  They’re cheaper to operate and can carry a full load of passengers and baggage although little cargo (which isn’t an LCC’s concern anyway.)  They offer a family of sizes, have a good dispatch rate, offer quick turn arounds, great range, good comfort and great potential for routes requiring frequency and low costs.  It is no wonder that David Neeleman chose them for his new airline, Azul, in Brazil.

But you can go used in the US and do pretty well too.  Allegiant Airlines buys used MD-82/83/87 aircraft, for instance.  They MD-80’s are overbuilt, cheap to buy and still pretty cheap to operate.  They have range, good dispatch rates, ease of maintenance and they’re abundant on the used market.   The same is true of older Boeing 737 models (pre Next Generation models) and those are becoming to cheap to purchase as well. 

In the end, an LCC needs an aircraft type that is relatively easy to expand into a fleet, keep one class of pilots flying it and which has a ready source of aircraft to augment and/or replace the fleet with. 

One type, many sizes should be the rule.   Ryanair uses one size, the Boeing 737-800 and Southwest basically uses one size, the Boeing 737-700 but they can afford to do so.  A new LCC needs operational flexibility and being prepared to use the three basic sizes of either type would be a good thing. 

But you can split your types too.  Airtran did this successfully by entering the world with DC-9s, transitioning to Boeing 717s and then growing in capacity by bringing on the Boeing 737.   That worked because while they needed two different pilot groups, the pilot groups could be kept “rational” with the same pay rates.   jetBlue split their types between the Airbus and the Embraer(190) and split their pilot groups pay rates too.  There was risk involved in that but jetBlue avoided that by offering pay rates on the Embraer that were as generous as that being offered other pilots flying mainline aircraft at other airlines. 

Find airports that welcome you and that have demand to locations you can serve.  Sounds easy but it isn’t.  In the US, airports tend to be wedded to airlines that have served them for decades.   When DFW opened, it was served by a number of major airlines and each terminal served one or more airline.  Now, DFW has been taken over by American Airlines (nearly 4 of 5 terminals) and does little to serve the needs of airlines who aren’t AA. 

Airports need to figure out that putting all their eggs in one basket with a major, hubbed airline isn’t a good strategy in the long run.  Once those airlines have that dominance, they use it to beat airports down on fees and coerce airports into paying for infrastructure the airlines then get to own.  It doesn’t benefit the local economy to have one dominant airline as prices rise and service falls.  This isn’t just true for DFW either.  When airports begin to aggressively pursue new entrants, everyone will win.

New and existing LCC entrants need to make a better argument too.  All too often, LCC’s tend to fear competing in those markets dominated by a major legacy carrier and that’s a mistake.  Airtran wasn’t afraid to go up against Delta and it paid off.  jetBlue wasn’t afraid to compete in one the most competitive markets in the world (NYC) and against some of the biggest airlines.  In the past, there weren’t good examples of what an LCC can do for both an airport and a metropolitan area.  Now there is and new LCCs in particular need to use that to their advantage. 

Treat your staff well.   Airlines sell a service product and while you may get customers on price, you’ll keep them with service.   Offering strategies to your crews that permit you high productivity and your crew a living wage along with a good working conditions can only lead to your success.   Treat them like commodities and you’ll fail.  Southwest, Ryanair, jetBlue and Airtran get this.  Skybus and Mesa Airlines don’t.  Look at who is making money. 

Quality of life is just as important to airline crew and staff as wages.  Airlines that offer good quality life tend to have happy crew flying their flights and treating their customers right.  At the end of the day, it is a lot cheaper to keep a customer than it is to find new ones every week. 

Will we ever see a close replica of Ryanair’s model here on a national basis?  Yes, I think so.  Right now, no.  The market is too crowded but that will change again and new airlines will be started again.   US attitudes towards fees and advertising are changing, although slowly.  

First we need to see a major airline liquidate or merge with another to reduce capacity some more.  Then we need to see an uptick in the economy that induces people to spend some money on travel again (both leisure and business travel.)   There needs to be a glut of aircraft useable for such a venture (and that’s happening already) and airports need to figure out that it is in their best interest to find space for these new entrants.  That really hasn’t started to happen yet but it may yet still happen.

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Northwest Airlines pilots have their flying privileges revoked by the FAA.

The FAA has revoked the pilots’ certificates immediately.  They now have 10 days to appeal this emergency action (and no doubt will.)

More from the Dallas Morning News HERE.

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I was going to write up something about my return trip on Airtran but here is the summary:  I left on time, I arrived late in ATL, I left ATL late and arrived in Dallas late.  I was tired but the aircraft and onboardservice was much the same as it was going outbound.

Now a word or three about what, I think, is still missing from the airline industry.  You, the airlines, can charge me fees for better seats and even my 2nd or 3rd bag checked.  You can outright eliminate food and beverages for all I care.   Your inflight magazine does nothing for me and internet access is pretty cool but wholly unnecessary even in today’s modern world.

I’d like to have a properly padded seat instead of an old worn one that I can feel the metal framing on.  I would like to have at least 32″ of seat pitch but I’d prefer 33″ of seat pitch.  If we are going to persist in this idea that flight attendants are there for my safety only, then how about we insist they treat their safety briefings as something more than a bored recitation.  And when you ask me if I know that I’m in an exit row and if I’m comfortable with that, at least look at me to see if I’ve nodded my head yes or no.

I would like the flight to depart and arrive reasonably on time according to the schedule you set.  I’ll define “reasonable” as being within 30 minutes of what you publish as the times (which is 15 minutes more generous than the government.)  It would be good for you to have my bag(s) at the baggage carousel within 15 to 20 minutes of opening the aircraft for us to deplane.  You are, after all, now charging me a fairly hefty fee to carry them.  And speaking of that fee . . .

I’d like my bags to be more secure in their travel.  That means providing a security apparatus that actually detects and stops thievery immediately.  If you want me to check in online, then don’t be charging a fee to do so.  After all, you (the airlines) wanted to eliminate the paper and you got what you want. 

I do expect a company that is capable of flying a multi-million dollar aircraft across the country to be able to provide sufficient and up to date status of my flight.  In other words, if you are going to change a gate assignment for an arriving airplane, change it in a timely manner so that my wife isn’t having to drive around the terminal *again* to pick me up because you couldn’t be bothered.  Don’t bother updating it 10 minutes after I’m in her car.  It does do any of us any good at all.

I don’t want to subsidize the frequent business traveler.  If they need larger seats and an internet connection, make *them* pay for it, not me.  

I’ve already agreed to sit in your metal tube for a specified time.  I know that part is going to be somewhat unpleasant and I accept that.  I don’t want to sit in your seats designed by Torquemada because you can’t adequately schedule your flights and find yourself unable to take off for several hours.  That is your problem, not mine.  Putting people on an aircraft and then holding them on a taxiway for even an extra two hours is the equivalent of fraud. 

You want better air traffic control andbetter flow around airports?  Great!  Do what airlines used to do and get together as an industry and”git ‘er done”.   I’ll happily fund it as a taxpayer but come to some agreement on what has to happen and *push* for it.   Wringing your hands and pointing at the FAA while yelling “Your Fault” is just childish.  You have both the staff and know how to help fix the situation so do it.

Treat your staff better.  You dont’ have to pay them the salary of a doctor but treat them like the human beings they are.  Reward their efforts and recognize them when they go beyond the call of duty.   Southwest Airlines manages to do this and they manage it with some of the highest labor costs in the industry.  It is a profitable and cost saving thing to do.  Quite acting like every one of your employees is reaching into your pocket and stealing. 

Yo!  Employees of airlines!  Get real too.  I do think you should be paid a living wage and treated well.  But I also think that you could adapt to the new world and figure out how to make your company succeed.  Quit extorting with the threats of labor action and come up with some solutions.  You work the jobs and therefore should have some solutions to the industry problems.  And if you just hate your job, find another one.  Don’t take out your frustrations with being away from home on me as I walk onto your aircraft.  You knew what that job entailed before you were hired so don’t make it my problem now.

To my fellow passengers:  Grow up.  You are no longer paying for food, drink or a reclining seat.  It’s an unfortunate reduction in service but it comes with a huge discount in the cost of flying.  Get on the plane, get a book out and enjoy a nice cup of shut the hell up.   Acting the prima donna only serves to raise tension levels enormously andby now you should have figured out that it doesn’t change anything.   When I ask you to raise your seat back *off* my kneecaps, don’t respond like I just asked you for a hundred dollar bill.  Show some courtesy and accomodate the request.  In return, I won’t speak to you and I’ll even let you have the arm rest if you’re quiet too.

Filed under: Airline Service by ajax
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Pilots and flight attendants are perceived as having jobs that are easy and financially secure.  This is largely due to the fact that flight crews commonly have several days in a row off each month where they are able to enjoy a different schedule and life.  Flight crews, in fact, have just as much stress, fatigue and constraints as any other job. 

Many in the flight crew start out augmenting their income with 2nd and even 3rd jobs they work during their off-duty hours because they earn so little money at the start of their careers.  A fully trained and qualified pilot starting out on his career can expect to make as little as $20,000 / year and flight attendants often earn less than $16,000 / year to start.  So in order to pay their rent and other living expenses, they take on flexible 2nd and 3rd jobs.  Later, when they are earning living wages, they tend to keep those jobs because their needs and wants have continued to grow in proportion to their total income.  In other words, they become a bit financially addicted to the supplemental income those 2nd and 3rd jobs provide.

Airlines pay so little to start because the lifetime costs to employ that flight crew members can be very expensive when they enter the last half of their career.  Unions have negotiated contracts that are first and foremost dependent on date of hire seniority and flight crew turnover is therefore very small compared to other industries.   There is no incentive to look for another job with another airline unless your present employer goes through a significant contraction or bankruptcy and has to lay you off.  Even then a flight crew member may well have incentives to earn supplemental income and wait for a callback rather than seek employment with a new airline. 

But it is airline management that has created this problem because they’ve failed to redefine the job positions to fit a new economic reality.  They exacerbate their situation by treating their employees (and unions) as hostile entities to be fought at every turn rather than finding new, more efficient ways to employee people. 

Airline management needs to first realize that the lifetime earnings of flight crew are unlikely to go significantly down or up.  But there is a way to distribute that income during the flight crew career in a way that provides better job security, more productivity and in a way that provides the stability employees want. 

First, stop paying flight crews horribly low salaries in their early years.  These people are trained and qualified professionals and deserve to be paid a wage that is more commensurate with the job skills they must possess to perform in those roles.  In other words, it’s time to pay a living wage right from the beginning.  Pilot’s should earn from $40K to $50K to start, for instance,   And pilots should recognize that in return for a living wage right from the start, they have to offer more flexibility in work rules.  They need to be willing to work on a more daily basis but for fewer hours per day so that airlines can begin scheduling them in a more rational manner.

Second, airlines should pay salaries that are roughly equivalent to engineers.   A senior engineer (not manager but engineer) can earn as much as $100K / year at the zenith of their career but not $300K.  For that kind of wage, an engineer must enter management and exhibit performance that justifies that wage.   Pilots should have retirement plans that are also commensurate with engineers.  Not pensions that pay out by the years of service but, rather, modern investment plans such as 401k plans that allow them to manage their futures and have some opportunity for portability.  Pensions are tied to seniority.  401k retirement investment plans are tied to the person and smart choices. 

Why is such a system better for a pilot?  For one, it reduces their dependency on one airline.  They are far less tied to the fortunes of their employers and have more opportunity to leave a badly managed airline in favor of a better managed airline.  Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to work for a better managed airline in favor or a badly managed one?  Making that possible industry wide would provide more opportunity for pilots to manage their stress and the demands their job makes on their personal lives. 

Unions should focus less on maximizing wages and more on improving the quality of life for their members.  Unions have the power to negotiate better work rules that alleviate horrific fatigue and stress and which provide a more humane way of living.   Happiness really doesn’t come from a top wage.  It comes from a living wage and having a real life.  Unions should seek more security for their members by negotiating flexible work rules that might allow flight crews to fly part time or job share with someone else.  That kind of flexibility would allow airlines to schedule flights more rationally and earn more profit  and be better positioned to offer wage increases more regularly rather than fight them at every contract negotiation. 

Airline management must recognize that the largest variable controlling their financial success is their flight crew.  Flight crew represents the largest part of their costs and the biggest factor in determining the service product they offer.   Treat them humanely and pay them a living wage and airlines can begin to experience more profit which will only make their investors happy. 

Unions have to recognize that the work rules in place now were only fitting for airline up to the late 1970’s.  It’s time for them to define how to best serve their members by identifying all the variables involved in a prosperous career rather than simply wages.   They should push for company financed training, better scheduling and work rules that permit both parties to profit from extra effort put forth serving a flight.

The go! Airlines pilots mentioned in yesterday’s post were fatigued because they were flying 8 leg segments for multiple days in a row.  Why?  Because under the present system of compensation and work rules, airlines must schedule pilots intensively in order to get the most for each dollar spent.  Airlines would actually be more flexible with hours worked if pilot’s earned a salary and had a negotiated minimum and maximum of hours to be worked each month.  

Under a new system such as I described above, pilots (and other flight crew) would no longer feel tied to working for an airline that punished them with a grueling schedule week after week.  They could seek better employment elsewhere without necessarily taking an enormous pay cut to do so.  Airlines would have more predictable labor costs, greater productivity and an incentive to take better care of their crew. 

It would also solve another looming problem for airlines.  A shortage of pilots.  Presently, the barriers to entering a career as a pilot are huge.  Airlines require new hires to obtain their minimum qualifications for hire at the employees expense and then pay them near poverty level salaries for the first several years of employment.  Fewer and fewer people can afford the $100K to $150K price tag to obtain those initial qualifications and certainly find the idea of earning a poverty wage after being hired unappealing. 

Under a new system of training the pilots and paying a living wage initially, airlines can attract new people to the jobs and ensure a steady, well trained and stable work force that wants to come to work and offer an efficient service product.  Potential pilots (and other flight crew) have better opportunities to enter the profession and a career that is more stable in the early years and entirely profitable throughout the lifetime of the employee.

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service, Deregulation by ajax
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I want you to imagine waking up at 5:00am on a Monday morning and then being at work by 6:30am.  Once at work, you’ll be climbing into another car and driving 1 hour trips across a busy metropolitan area such as Chicago or Dallas or Los Angeles.  At each stop you’ll have about 5 to 10 minutes to go to the bathroom or to get something to drink or munch on through the day.  You do this from 7:30am until 7:30pm at night. 

Once finished, because you are far away from your home, you get a motel room and go someplace to eat like Chili’s.  You do get to sleep by 10pm (and mind you I just gave you only 2.5 hours to find a motel, get something to eat and then get yourself prepared to sleep which sounds like a lot but really isn’t) but you are in a strange, hard bed and your sleep is disturbed somewhat. 

You get up at 5:00am again, shower and pack and get a ride back to your duty station and climb back into a car to drive from 7:30am to 7:30pm again under the same conditions described above.  Once done, you do get to go home and sleep and arrive home at around 9pm.  You have to eat, get to sleep and, once more, get up at 5:00am to do this routine one more time all day.

How tired are you going to be on that third day of duty?  Almost anyone, physically fit or not, is going to be pretty exhausted.  He or she will be prone to make mistakes in their daily work and will find it difficult to stay awake at the wheel at certain points of the day.  That’s the life of a domestic airline pilot.  It’s really not any different for flight attendants, by the way.   Oh and before we go on, I want to point out that that pilot working those duty hours will actually only be paid for about 8 or 9 of the 12 hours they’ll be working on such a schedule. 

Now, some people might be tempted to say they could or did handle such a schedule and it wasn’t any big deal.  Really?  No big deal?  Well, I’ll agree that many of us have had to work such a fatiguing schedule (including myself during my courier driver days 20 years ago) but let’s not act like it isn’t a big deal.  It is.  Under such situations, most people will make bad mistakes, act irritable towards fellow workers or even customers, they’ll eat poorly and they’ll be prone to falling into micro-sleeps (nodding off for brief moments) during their work. 

Is that who you want flying you from Chicago to Cedar Rapids?  Well, you have probably a 2 in 3 chance that your pilot on such a flight will be just that fatigued.   Think about that for a few moments.

 Earlier in 2008, two pilots (an experienced captain and first officer) fell asleep while flying a go! Airlines (a subsidiary of Mesa Airlines) commuter flight in Hawaii.  The NTSB has released a final report on that incident which can be found HERE.  In short, both the captain and first officer had flown schedules not unsimilar to the scenario I described at the start of this post and both fell victim to fatigue.  While there was no harm suffered from their falling asleep, it is a disturbing development.   Mesa fired both pilots as a result of this incident which, in part, ultimately came to light from their self reporting the problem (as well as the problem being originally identified by ATC when they tried to clear them to their destination.)

It highlights a problem that is growing among pilots over the past 20 years.  Fatigue and work rules to mitigate it are a major subject of many, if not most, union contract negotiations.   Airlines are fighting new work rules as proposed by the FAA in court now.  Pilot unions are refusing to cooperate with work rule variances on many new ultra-long haul routes that have the potential to be major money makers for airlines.   Two years ago, American Airlines bid to fly a route from DFW airport to China and ultimately had to amend their proposal because the pilot’s union refused to give a work rule variance for the 18+ hour flight.  American Airlines lost the bid as a result. 

In Part 2, I’ll discuss the opportunities to make a real change in this problem that could benefit both pilots and airlines. 

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service, Deregulation by ajax
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Last week an extended family of Muslim Indians were removed from an Airtran flight from Washington D.C. to Orlando.  It made the news in several places but here is an LA Times / Associated Press version of the events.  Scroll down to read the story.

I take issue with several details of this story actually.  First, this happened to US born US Citizens of this country.  That in itself is highly objectionable to me because it is clear that this issue formed as a function of their appearance and the assumed religious identification of these folks.  That is xenophobia. 

Second, the conversation they had which prompted the reaction by passengers was a conversation that I have personally heard  spoken on many flights and that includes a conversation between myself and my wife the last time we flew together to New York state.  It’s a conversation that many people have because the infrequent traveler wants to feel safe on an airplane.  Now, when my wife asked me about the “safest” part of an airplane to sit in, my own response was that I couldn’t imagine a “safe” place to sit on an airplane traveling hundreds of miles an hour about to hit the ground.  I also said that it’s foolish, in my opinion, to believe such a place exists on airplane that is going to crash.  No one objected to that conversation or many of the others I’ve overheard on airplanes since 2001.

Third, even if I concede it might have been something worth checking out, at the least, the FBI cleared this family to travel after speaking with them and the TSA cleared *all* of the luggage traveling on the airplane.   The FBI actually encouraged Airtran to carry on and, still, they were kept back.  Why?  Because airlines have decided to leave such a decision in the hands of the captain of an airplane and, at the same time, encourage pilots to *always* take the path that is most “sure” in such situations.  In other words, captains are simply encouraged to deny boarding to the suspect passengers on that immediate flight because it keeps everyone settled.

I take objection to that.  I would like to see a captain and his crew show some moral courage and simply indicate that such passengers, after being fully checked out, were OK to fly and they therefore were going to continue on the flight as every other paying passenger would expect to do so if it were them.   There was absolutely nothing to be afraid of whatsoever. 

Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, religious denominations and physical appearances.  For us to accept that it is morally correct to seize upon someone as a potential terrorist simply because they are of the same race or religion as those terrorists of September 11, 2001 is stupid and ignorant of the way the world works. 

Want more proof?  The two people who initiated this concern with the flight crew were teenage girls.  I have a teenage girl of my own and I assure you that teenagers are *not* capable of making a credible judgement about someone who might be strange to them.  They are still kids, not adults and they certainly do not possess the life experience necessary to make such judgements.  That is why they are under the custody of adults, their parents. 

Airtran has most likely lost this Muslim Indian family as a set of customers for life.  By my count, that probably cost them about nine airfares to a destination that many families repeatedly visit.   All in favor of two teenage girls.   That was a foolish business decision. 

I have said it before and I will say it here.  The likelihood that a group of terrorists could take over an airplane, pilot it to a city such as New York City and crash one or more aircraft into a building after the tragedy of September 11, 2001 is so small that you have a far bigger risk of getting killed by lightening.   Do you wander out everyday wondering if this is your day to be killed by lightening?  The reason that attack was successful was because airlines have for years trained their staff to cooperate with a hijacker to get the plane to the ground where almost always the situation is resolved without deaths.  It was, until September 11, 2001, a very rational and very reasonable strategy.

Now it isn’t.  No plane will ever let someone or a group hijack an airplane in that manner ever again.  Not the passengers and not the flight crew.  Think I’m wrong?  Take a long look at how every other incident of someone losing control on an airplane or of someone attempting to breach a cockpit door has ended since flying began again in the post September 11 world.  Every person has been met with overwhelming force from passengers and flight crew and ultimately restrained. 

No, the next big attack won’t be by airplane.  It will be by another strategy that someone will use to take advantage of a security weakness either in another transportation mode (did you know that trains didn’t screen passengers and luggage like the airlines until the last year) or through a delivery method that is simply unpredictable at this time.  And it won’t necessarily be by Muslim terrorist either.  If you think I’m wrong, let me point you to the Oklahoma City bombing by a white Irish Catholic man named Timothy McVeigh.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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Deregulation in 1978 was never full deregulation.  It was, instead, deregulation of the revenue side of the equation.  Airlines were suddenly free to fly routes and set fares as they wanted.  The barriers to entry on a route were no longer regulatory but, rather, business cost.  My father phrased the start of a route as “starting a new business” and I must say that that is true.  Airlines have to invest in infrastructure, new employees and market their services when entering a new city or route.  The airline is essentially starting a new business.

What never got deregulated was the labor cost side of the equation.  Flight crews were fully unionized (with the notable exception of Delta’s Flight Attendants) and the union approach to wages and work rules was and always has been to negotiate for more each contract.  When the game changed with regulation, the airlines were still inhibited from negotiating freely for their labor on an open market because the unions had 30 years of precedent and enormous political power.  God help the airline who had pilots striking against it because it denied *any* revenue to the company and airlines are cash intensive businesses.  They go out of business very quickly if that cash stream is interrupted. 

Using pilots as example, take a look at their negotiating power in 1978.  First, the barriers to entry in a career as a pilot were (and to some degree remain so) very high.  A typical pilot spent 7 to 9 years in the military flying multi-engined aircraft and when they exited, they got their ATP license and went hunting a type certificate to fly for an airline.  Once in an airline, they entered a seniority system that made it very difficult to leave because every airline had the same system.  If you started at one airline, made captain on an aircraft type and then wanted to leave, you had to start over again.  The union(s) set a contract and work rules in place that essentially made each airline a fiefdom.

The airline union is the lord and the pilots are the serfs.  Well paid serfs in their later years but serfs nonetheless.  Not only is there no incentive to seek work elsewhere, there were strong incentives to stay and play the game no matter what.   Even when an airline is by all measures about to fail.

This situation remains true for most airline unions to some degree or another.  What the government never did was deregulate labor so that airlines could compete for qualified people to fill their staffing needs.  One interesting by-product of this is that airline pilots work terrible schedules today.  They do so because it is enormously expensive to have a pilot sitting on the ground doing nothing.  Airlines fly pilots on different schedules than their flight attendants (at least at most airlines) and they do so because they want to extract all possible value from them because the cost is so high.  Ironically, a more ratioinally paid airline pilot would work an *easier* and more rational schedule that impacted their lives (both personally and professionally) far less if their pay were more in line with a free market competition.   Mind you, they wouldn’t be underpaid, just paid more in line with the demands of their job.

My father thinks that a free market salary for a pilot would be about $70,000 / year and there would be far less range between entry level and an experienced level.  I personally believe that number would be higher.  About $100K to $120K.  I think so because the costs to become a qualified airline pilot and the skill required still make for a rather rare person today.   The pilot still has to become qualified under FAA rules by getting time first on single engine aircraft, then multi-engine aircraft and turbine engined aircraft.   Flying also takes  talent.  Being an commercial pilot also means having a great understanding of engineering (many pilots gets undergraduate degrees in engineering for just this reason.) 

What the airlines needed was an opportunity to negotiate for new labor under new rules.  It would have been impractical and politically difficult to “break” the existing unions.  It would have been better to set new rules for airline unions and airline flight crew going forward.  For instance, eliminating the seniority system but making one’s qualifications and types fully transportable between airlines for the same pay would have made it more fair to both sides.  A pilot who was “captain” qualified on a Boeing 737 would be able to take those qualifications and fly at any airline for market pay.  

Suddenly a pilot would not be married to just one airline and have to deal with fear of furloughs and bankruptcy multiple times in their career that could reset them back to “zero” in their career.  Instead, they would be able to seek positions at other airlines for a commensurate career salary.  The same could be true for any flight crew.   It would even have the benefit of further “harmonizing” best practices among various airlines. 

Over the years, some airlines have made some attempts to re-negotiate this situation.  American Airlines introduced the A/B pay scales in the 1980s.  That worked very well for many years but the advantage was lost because the “B” scale employees still worked for the original union and the “A” scale employees had a vested interest in raising all salaries for everyone.   

There is nothing wrong with unions existing in the workplace.  However, when a union’s sole focus is on raising salaries to everyone else’s detriment, it begins to lose value.  Unions can and should enforce good work rules, good working conditions and even qualification standards and salaries.  They should not, however, distort their own labor market or their airline goes down.

Another way airlines have gotten around this is by starting commuter feeder airlines.  American Airlines has American Eagle for instance.  These “new” airlines have employees who are hired at “market” rates and who remain employed by unions.  Now the airlines use these airlines to fly mainline routes at higher frequencies because it is more cost effective than flying the route with less frequency but greater capacity using mainline equipment.

A great example of this is American Airlines and how they served the DFW – MKE (Milwaukee) route a couple of years ago.  They used 50 seat ERJ-145 aircraft in their American Eagle subsidiary and flew as many as 5 cycles a day.  What’s worse, they frequently turned away people or re-routed them through Chicago because their aircraft were either capacity limited or load limited.  The aircraft had average load factors far in excess of 85%.   The better solution would have been to fly either mainline MD-80 or Boeing 737 aircraft 2 to 3 times a day.   That would have offered better service (more reliable and not load limited), more comfortable seating and slightly shorter flights.  But they couldn’t because AA MD-80/B737 pilots for such routes would cost 4 times more than American Eagle pilots. 

The demand was there.  The fares actually offered great revenue opportunities (when compared to average DFW – ORD fares) but the expenses were still too great on the labor side.   So people were offered a cramped ERJ with all coach service that, by the way, eventually lost passenger traffic to Midwest Express (who flies more comfortable MD-80s and B717 aircraft) and to other mainline airlines who would service Dallas via Chicago or Minneapolis-St. Paul. 

Regional Jets were never built for serving such markets and they do so very inefficiently.  Regional aircraft should never be serving route sectors greater than 400 nautical miles and certainly should never be serving mainline city pairs such as MKE-DFW.    They should fly from Odessa to Dallas or Cedar Rapids to Milwaukee. 

Could labor be less regulated in the airline world today?  I don’t know.  It would require great political will and I frankly don’t see that on the horizon.   It would require the airline industry to be both realistic and cooperative with each other and it would require unions to recognize that not every contract means “more” but maybe it means different and more accomodating instead.  It should also offer some job security and certainty too. 

In the next part, we’ll take a look at how the lack of full deregulation has distored air travel in the United States and caused inefficiencies.

Filed under: Deregulation, Trivia by ajax
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This weekend I had a series of long and very interesting conversations about airline economics and deregulation in the airline industry with my father, a former executive vice president of Braniff.  I have been following the airline industry since the mid 1990’s and very closely since the early 2000’s and after this weekend I can only say there is still more I don’t know. 

The insight I gained on the industry this weekend isn’t easy to get anymore.  Much of what takes place today in the airline world overshadows the history of the industry.  But I thought I would share my new insight in a series of stories this week on airline economics and deregulation.  Information presented as fact comes from my father.  The opinions are mine unless otherwise attributed to someone else.

The first of these stories is quite naturally about the history and background of the airline industry.  What almost any fan knows is that the airline world as primarily fostered by air mail contracts originally.  It wasn’t until the DC-3 (and similar aircraft) that an airline could really earn profits from passengers and even then air mail was an essential part of earning a profit as an airline.   In other words, passengers reduced the importance of air mail but it was a long time before it diminished the importance of air mail revenue to a point at which it could be considered relatively unimportant.

Prior to air mail, the fastest way to move mail around was by train.  Trains had reliable schedules and a robust network of lines that made it easy, for the first time in history, to move mail in a timely manner.  Since many infant industries are heavily influenced by more mature industries, it comes as no surprise that many of the “best practices” used by railroads were “inherited” by airlines as they began to operate. 

One good example of this is how engineers on trains were (and still are) paid.  It was based on time, distance and weight.  An engineer who operated a long, heavy train on a transcontinental route quite obviously was going to A) Be away from home. B) Need skills and experience to operate that train over different terrain. C) Be able to know how to stop such a leviathan in an emergency without completely destroying the train itself. 

The engineers were paid a scale of wages that took into account their skill and experience as well as punishing time away from home and long duty hours required to push that train to its destinations.  In other words, an engineer who had to stay on duty for 12 hours a day driving a 1/2 mile long train over a mountainous area would be paid much more than an engineer who drove a feeder line over a short distance delivering boxcars to factories in an industrial area.  Quiet naturally, this kind of thinking was quickly adopted by airlines and airline pilots. 

Very early in the game, airline pilots were paid according to the size of their aircraft (a DC-3 pilot earned much more than a pilot of a Ford Tri-Motor) and the distance they traveled.  They are paid in the same manner today.  A pilot who flies a Boeing 737 on 4 or 5 flight segments for 10 hours is paid less per hour than a pilot who flies a Boeing 777 for one flight segment that takes the same time.  The argument is and always has been that the B777 pilot is responsible for a larger aircraft, more souls on board and therefore works harder for those same hours. 

The reality is really quite different.  Most of the work a pilot incurs is on takeoffs and landings, not during cruise flight.  It requires no great difference of knowledge to fly a B777 or a B737 and, in fact, it may be easier to fly the B777 with its more sophisticated flight management computers.  The number of souls on board sounds like a good argument but, as my father pointed out, is it?  After all, in almost any aircraft crash, the pilot(s) are the most certain to be casualties.  So, isn’t it in their best interest to fly that aircraft as best they can no matter how many others are on board?  Of course it is.  Practically speaking, we regard it as a tragedy if 20 or 200 people are killed or injured in a crash.

So, who should be paid more?  If it is about how hard the work is, then many regional feeder pillots should be paid far more than the B757 pilot who might only fly 3 or 4 segments in a day.  That same feeder pilot might work twice as hard for the same duty time because he or she is making 5 or 6 or even 7 landings and take-offs per day.  Both pilots have to know a complicated set of systems.  Both planes have just 2 engines.  Both airplanes have to navigate the same kind of airspace and altitudes.  Who is working harder?  The regional jet pilot is.

But he or she is also the least paid.  Regional jet pilots just starting out make as little as just $20,000 to $25,000 per year.  A B757 pilot is likely making 5 to 8 times that much money for the same or less duty hours. 

All because airlines adopted the same pay models that railroads used.  It suddenly becomes more clear why airline managers often resent pilots the most.  In the mid 1970’s, a Braniff 727 captain made as much as 50% more than a senior Braniff executive.  Did the captain work more hours?  No.  In fact, if he worked 80 duty hours a month and if you allowed a 20% bump in hours for time worked but not paid, he or she still only worked 96 hours in a month.  That same airline executive was paid for 160 hours per month and probably worked about 200 hours per month.   The airline can’t run profitably or reliably without either person so who was overpaid?  The pilots, of course.

In the next part, we’ll take a look at how pilots (and other aircrew) distorted the the 1978 deregulation of the industry.

Filed under: Deregulation, Trivia by ajax
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The pilots of both Delta and NorthWest Airlines have approved a new joint collective bargaining agreement according to CNN.  This is likely the biggest obstacle, labor-wise, to this merger although I do think that there is potential trouble when it comes to the flight attendants of each airline.

You see, Delta’s flight attendants are not unionized but they do enjoy some of the best pay, schedules and working conditions of any of the legacy airlines.  NorthWest flight attendants, however, are highly unionized and have not traditionally been very management friendly.  No doubt, some of that enmity is earned.  From time to time, there is a movement to unionize Delta FAs but it always results in a no vote with only about 1/3 of their FA’s ever voting for a union.

In this new matchup, it is quite likely that Northwest flight attendants will move to organize under the new company structure immediately and they themeslves have a physical majority over the total number of Delta flight attendants.  See where this is going? 

Delta, particularly the current leadership, needs to go to great lengths to try to head off that move for two reasons:  First, they just gave a very handsome deal to the pilots and flight attendants are going to want to share in that wealth.  Second, they currently enjoy unprecedented flexibility that allows them to work much more closely with the flight attendants on things like scheduling and other work rules.  That flexibility rewards both parties presently but a pro-union/anti-management organization will cut deeply into Delta’s ability to maneuver in today’s business climate.

I don’t hold out much hope for Delta though.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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