wsuffa
Touchdown! Greaser!
It is more than that. Herb was a big part of it too. And if you had ever been on a flight with him, you'd understand completely.
Spirit Airlines Pax Riot
- Thread starter Art VanDelay
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gsengle
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Gsengle
Go to airlinepilotforums.com plenty of up to date info there. Pilots are doing ok... and their contract isn't secret.
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denverpilot
Tied Down
Most of the more experienced (sorry Art) just grumble and growl that those without experience need to suffer like they did, and really don't seem to know why their industry treats one of their most important resources like crap, compared to other normal businesses.
I mean really, not many jobs that hit pay scales of what most folks would deem "white collar" work, have unions anymore, or have staff that are constantly in "labor disputes" with their highly successful corporations and leadership. It's downright weird. (And ATC falls into this observation, too.) They just get paid better than the competition if they're really good at what they do.
It's also really rare to see a large Corp using massive sub-contractors and slapping their logos on them, at least for things inside the US, non-manufacturing related. And even then, Apple doesn't slap their logo on Foxconn and try to make the world think their cut-rate slave labor manufacturer in China *is* Apple. They'd be insane to do that. Talk about a great way to destroy a brand or any possible customer goodwill it might fetch. (I get it with the wholly-owned regionals. If you own it, brand it, sure.)
Most professional jobs have industry associations where one can be "rated" (to use an aviation term... "certified" would be the tech term...) in various skill sets and if a company, ANY company is looking for that skill set, those professionals have mobility between companies... people with a higher skill set, company wants to buy, they just buy.
Aviation seems completely lost on this concept. Unions certainly don't want anybody jumping the seniority line at Company A, even if the same Union represents Company B.
Trade Unions ..? They make that their goal, man. You have an advanced skill in IBEW, let's say? They're going to pull you off of any company's project to send the top folks to whoever is paying for them. Master Electrician, 20 years of HVAC? New Convention Center? We'll send ten if you need 'em. When do you want them there? We'll call 30 of them right now and let them know your offer.
I mean, I get it. There's always someone willing to fly for nearly nothing, but the entire business is loaded with strange examples of not wanting to change anything because... "We've always done it this way..."
It's a very odd business.
hindsight2020
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hindsight2020
We re conflating issues here. The existence of barriers to entry in the interest of public safety is reasonable when people are not willing to drive a Greyhound for fun, but ARE willing to fly high subsonic 200k# turbine transports for funsies.see colgan 3407 for prime examples of how economic barriers do not deter zealots from hurting others in their quest to satisfy their petulance.
That is a different issue from the unabated rent-seeking on the part of senior pilots, and their contempt for the notion their successors could ever get a marginally better deal in life than they. Aka the "pay your dues" anachronism.
That is a different issue from the unabated rent-seeking on the part of senior pilots, and their contempt for the notion their successors could ever get a marginally better deal in life than they. Aka the "pay your dues" anachronism.
Logbook?
denverpilot
Tied Down
You think the Colgan crash was two pilots who wanted to fly airliners for "funsies"?!
That's pretty impressive. Because you know, commuting halfway across the country with little sleep, from your parent's house where your paycheck can at least cover your food bill, and dragging your butt into the seat of a Dash-8 going to Buffalo in a snowstorm, is definitely what I think of when I'm looking for "funsies"!
LOL!
WTH man? Where did you come up with that crazy assed concept?
Zealots? Petulance? Explain.
denverpilot
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SkyHog
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Everything Offends Me
I see comparisons between pilots and MDs, and pilots and RNs. Where is the real comparison?
In Albuquerque, a city bus driver works long hours and gets paid $14/hr. And he isn't locked in labor negotiations because his job is so technical. And he doesn't have an autopilot and a 2nd set of eyes to let his hit the toilet when his morning coffee kicks in
In Albuquerque, a city bus driver works long hours and gets paid $14/hr. And he isn't locked in labor negotiations because his job is so technical. And he doesn't have an autopilot and a 2nd set of eyes to let his hit the toilet when his morning coffee kicks in
denverpilot
Tied Down
LOL. Should move to Denver. Bus drivers are paid way better here. Even the school bus drivers make more than that.
You gonna be able to work through medical stuff and then someday do some BasicMed magic there, man? Anything good on that front?
hindsight2020
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hindsight2020
Google Shiny Jet Syndrome. It's pretty simple actually. You view those hardships as not worth it, precisely because you don't consider the activity as fun. They did, and the price inelasticity and responding behavior towards those very hardships you wince against, is what made them zealots. It's irrational economic behavior, and it was done in the interest of placing their self-actualization needs ahead of their basic needs (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). That's religious behavior, and unhealthy to a fault. The rest is literally history.
A rational economic player endures that deficit because it affords economic access they cannot attain by having a 9-5 in their hometown next to their kids and wife. We call those: major airline pilots, or semi-retired hobby regional pilots. These were not rational players, and that was my only point in bringing up Colgan 3407.
You can also offer me and the gallery your alternate theory for the economic behavior of regional pilots, if mine seems preposterous to you.
denverpilot
Tied Down
I see. Regional pilots have joined a cult. LOL.
You may be right. But it's pretty far out there.
You completely left out self-actualization in your Maslow babble.
There's a lot of folks who'd rather self-actualize than eat. Maslow created a model but he didn't really take into account that humans aren't always rational.
If we were, phrases like, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." wouldn't exist.
Plus, neither one was ACTUALLY starving to death. Both had excellent safety nets, if nothing else, just by being members of our society here.
It's really hard to actually starve to death in the U.S.
So they really hadn't put their lower level Maslow needs ahead of their self-actualization at all. Maybe for a few hours of sleep, but I haven't met a professional of any sort who hasn't lost some sleep over work at some point or another in their career.
My God man, everyone who's ever had a job they had to get up early for, were petulant zealots who were breaking the very heart of Maslow's heriarchy by forgetting their banana on the counter!! Religious behavior!!
Hahaha. Or they just had to get to work or get fired and then they wouldn't have any bananas next week.
The feds had to pass regulations to limit work hours to 85/week and not more than 30hr duty periods (with no more than 24hrs of it patient care).
Ghery
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Ghery Pettit
Sounds like a good reason to not book a flight on AA. I don't have status with them, and a 29 inch pitch is a gamble I won't take. I just paid an extra $700 to avoid an itinerary to VVO (coming home, actually) to avoid an airline that Seatguru said had a pitch of 30-32 inches in coach (not to mention that I would have spent a combined 20 hours in those seats). 29 inches? No way! AA is dead in my eyes.
hindsight2020
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hindsight2020
You know, you could disagree with my premise without having to resort to ridicule.
If you think it's all good at the regionals and that people don't get hurt because of the religious and economic irrational behavior of participants, then by all means offer up your theory on the topic of regional work. For a guy who just said he's puzzled about the strangeness of the business you seem intent on tearing down other people's theories. Enlighten us then by all means, genuinely interested in your take more than in your potshots at mine.
Acrodustertoo
Ejection Handle Pulled
I think this is in order
NoHeat
En-Route
I think airlines should be required to disclose seat pitch and width when you reserve. Minimum numbers for the entire coach class on the flight, actual numbers for seat assignment.
denverpilot
Tied Down
Because it's not religious or irrational. It's a job.
I can observe that the job is weird compared to other professional jobs, without needing to call two dead kids "petulant" or pretend they weren't trying to be professionals. They made a huge mistake, but your theory insults them greatly.
That's why the ridicule. If you're going to attack dead people who can't defend themselves, it seems only fair your silly theory can be mocked.
Defend it. If I can put holes in it the size of a truck, it probably sucks. They can't defend against your ridicule of them.
Do I think the captain did a really bad thing and stalled the airplane? Yeah.
Air France also did. So it's not exactly unheard of once you reach the "shiny jet" either.
But I don't see you calling that crew "petulant" or saying they're part of some cult/religious behavior. Or that they were irrational to fly their airplane for a living.
Would you like some more holes poked in your "theory" or should we stop here?
denverpilot
Tied Down
Apologies @hindsight2020 if that was a bit too emotional. I just hate it when people come up with goofy theories that people who fly airplanes for a living have some sort of death wish.
They just go to work. Nobody expects to die today in an airplane when they strap one on and start it up. Whether paid well to do it or paid poorly.
I don't mind saying the industry is screwy. I don't mind saying a crew messed up. I don't mind saying their training had a hole in it somewhere.
But I think it crosses a line when someone attacks their reasoning for getting in the airplane in the first place. We can't ask dead people why they fly.*
* Granted sometimes we can see a pattern of risk taking if they were totally nuts, and even find documents to prove it. But usually that's not the case.
They just go to work. Nobody expects to die today in an airplane when they strap one on and start it up. Whether paid well to do it or paid poorly.
I don't mind saying the industry is screwy. I don't mind saying a crew messed up. I don't mind saying their training had a hole in it somewhere.
But I think it crosses a line when someone attacks their reasoning for getting in the airplane in the first place. We can't ask dead people why they fly.*
* Granted sometimes we can see a pattern of risk taking if they were totally nuts, and even find documents to prove it. But usually that's not the case.
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
But Herb is gone and GK ain't no Herb.
There are still some advantages to SWA, but they become more and more like all the other legacies every day. And now they have their own PAX fistfights
hindsight2020
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hindsight2020
I'm not trying to be gratuitously incendiary. I've never suggested they were suicidal. I'm merely suggesting their aggregate behavior was irresponsible, and not in an isolated fashion. I don't consider the lapse in basic airmanship that led to the loss of control, something that ought to be shelved into the "mistakes happen" pile. I think there was much more to the chronology of Colgan 3407 that shines a light into the irrational and irresponsible behavior that permeates the regional airline aggregate work dynamics. The CA's repeated failures, especially part 121 training events. The FO's negligent commuting itinerary and self-disclosure of viral illness AFTER signing-in for the flight (per CVR evidence). All of it indicative, in my opinion, of a petulant insistence in exercising vocational choices not in the interest of public safety.
It's clear to me you pointedly disagree with my meta-criticism of the dead's state of mind via the proxy of their economic behavior. We'll have to agree to disagree on that account. Do please understand I'm not trying to troll you. Shiny Jet Syndrome is not something I coined, it's a dynamic that has been described by people in the industry for decades. I do think the use of the term petulant is appropriate here, again my opinion. We talk a big game about IMSAFE and ADM, but the second people are told in America they can't do something because they are unapologetically priced out from doing it, holy hell here comes the pitchforks.
What kind of moral relativism must there exist where it's ok to threaten the lives of paying passengers just because regional pilots shall not be denied the right to pursue their vocational jollies with abandon and nobody can be critical about it? And furthermore, the idea that it's also ok because mainline pilots crash too? I don't agree with that relativism at all. They may not have had suicidal tendencies, but they killed those people nonetheless because they bit off more than they could chew and neither had the stones to know when to fold them. Now, the industry allowed them that discretion under monetary motivations of the airline's own (cheap scumbag regional operations), and innocent people died for it (apprenticeship with innocents in the back). So the culpability is shared. But I will continue to be critical of anyone who call themselves a professional pilot yet indulges in that behavior just because they insist on playing airline pilot everything else be damned.
denverpilot
Tied Down
This is where I think you're reaching. I don't think anyone involved in (either regional or mainline) accidents has any thoughts consciously at all of "playing airline pilot". As far as they're concerned they ARE airline pilots. The FAA says so, their company says so, and by every measure they've met every standard set for them.
Yeah, the captain had failures in the Colgan thing, but the industry still said he was Captain. That the training or evaluation process is weak -- or MAYBE allows too many chances -- really isn't his fault. He still woke up that morning thinking he had a job to go do and even though he might not be the best at it, he hadn't been tossed.
In mainline accidents like the AF (since we used it, I'll just contrast with it for convenience since both accidents were a fundamental flaw in understanding aircraft stall behavior), the pilots even moreso think they're prepared for most any eventuality.
But this idea that anyone will ever KNOW if they're "playing airline pilot" or actually are an airline pilot is an impossible to define and somewhat insulting concept you dump on them. They get up, put on a uniform, and go to work doing whatever they know how to do, and sometimes the circumstances are such that it finally exposes a huge missing chunk of critical information in their experience. Stuff even that we all may slap our heads and say, "OMG, how could they not KNOW that?!"
But as an instructor that's one of the biggest fears. Did I miss ANYTHING in training someone that'll be screwed up in their head for life via Primacy and will ANYONE catch it later and help them correct it before they kill themselves or others?
And then, of course, talking to instructors who HAVE watched former students die in airplanes, they confirm that yes, they DID teach those things -- somehow the human brain just didn't retain it at the moment it needed it the most to survive.
Example: The thread on the guy who flew into a thunderstorm with a VFR ticket. You really think nobody ever told him NOT to do that? of course they did. And he had no REAL pressure to get to Vegas. Nothing "Maslow" would say he needed to be there for.
Start tying paychecks to ANY human endeavor and some twisted things always happen. If you need the paycheck you might fly with a cold. If you need the paycheck you might not ask for more help when you're bombing checkrides and worried the next one might be your last. Etc.
But those influences are not tied to any sense of "I'm going to pretend to be an airline pilot."
It's a fine line when teaching to know when a student can do something and they need more confidence versus when they're overconfident and need to be taken down a notch. But we generally see in people a LOT more of the former than the latter as they step up their game.
And there's also the question of just how high do they need to step up their game? The people involved in those accidents met the standards set for them by a long list of people who created, reviewed, and changed those as needed for decades.
Even the crew rest "problems" that people feel Colgan started to "fix"? Pilots had flown hundreds and hundreds of millions of people under the old ones. Yeah, in hindsight, fatigue is bad. But increased automation in the decades that followed the original crew rest rules also plays a role. It played a big role in both accidents, too.
Trying to pin down the airline's problems to some weird perception that pilots want to "play pilot" is a much bigger reach than an awful lot of reasons that can actually be fixed.
Didn't everyone want to "play" whatever they grew up to be when they're kids in a great many roles? We don't say engineers that messed up and the bridge fell down, was caused because the engineer wanted to pretend they were an engineer. We look for actionable things that let the engineer make that big of a mistake.
Zeldman
Touchdown! Greaser!
When I was younger I would enjoy a good free for all. It didn't matter who or why. I guess the passengers were a little bored and needed something to make the day a little brighter....
Larry in TN
En-Route
Sort of like the state required window sticker on used cars:
[ ] Optional deep vein thrombosis service
[ ] Beat-down and drag warranty available.
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
Go to airlinepilotforums.com plenty of up to date info there. Pilots are doing ok... and their contract isn't secret.
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That's actually a bit dated. Last year we had a particularly astute 777 First Officer that managed to bid just about all of his trips with instructor pilot (check airman) captains. The company "bought" his trips for training. He then went into open time and picked another trip. His W2 wages were $320,000. Not bad for First Officer pay. If anybody would like a more complete pay and benefits breakdown of all current major US airlines PM me and I can email you an extremely detailed PDF.
gsengle
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Gsengle
That was a 2016 salary survey. Seems pilots are doing ok...
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Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
Nathaniel you certainly have an art for rambling on ! I'd be willing to bet you could generate a 500 page essay on "How a Crowbar is Made" !!!
I find your example dealing with a Master Electrician with 20 years of experience a bit baffling. Probably because I have no experience in that industry and tend to not pontificate on things outside my realm of experience - unlike yourself. But why would anyone specify the electrician have 20 years experience when they could hire one with 10 years of experience for less ? Did some regulatory agency specify that the job require a 20 year man ? If I'm a corporate bean counter I'm gonna try get the cheapest guy possible in there. I mean why not ? Maybe the project falls apart but maybe - just maybe it doesn't and HR is a hero for saving some money. That btw is exactly how airlines think.
Which is exactly why that wouldn't work for airlines and airline unions. There is NO requirement for years of experience or hours beyond the initial ATP rating. All that is required is the certification. If ALPA were to stipulate that ALL 737 first officers with 7 years of experience MUST be paid X amount per hour then guess what - unless the FAA tells me I have hire pilots with 7+ years of experience (which they do not) I as the airline am going to hire the cheapest labor possible. Conversely if I'm the 7 year 737 FO out on the street I might wait around a little while for someone to honor my seniority but after a while I'm going to eventually swallow my pride and realize I have to go to work for starting pay if I want to work at all. Unless the FAA mandates an experience level then there's no reason for a company to want to pay for it.
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Kayoh@190
It's pretty incredible that the workload is such that someone found it necessary to regulate it to *only* 85/week.
It's pretty incredible that the workload is such that someone found it necessary to regulate it to *only* 85/week.
The workload is one thing, the educational aspect is another. If you spend more time in the hospital, you are going to see more patients, operate more and gain more experience during the brief 5 years of general surgery residency. Most other specialties have a fairly busy intern year, in GS it gets worse as you advance ;-)
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Kayoh@190
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
Yes I would agree. Here's a chart that goes into a little more detail in terms of total compensation - this is for a 15 year narrow body captain ;
Attachments
Haha - thanks for the warning!
You have to take the long view. Massage those aching feet at night and get that coffee pot going at 3:45 in the morning and she'll be all yours. When she is done with residency, have her take a job at St Longwheretodrive community memorial hospital, buy a Meridian and play 'kept man'
. (Now I am trying to remember where my life took the wrong turn).
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denverpilot
Tied Down
Is your chart 15 years in the company with Captain upgrade anytime in that 15, or is it 15 as Captain? You don't say.
Your industry has never been awful in the last 15 years of the career. It's the *first* 15 where it's not competitive with other professional jobs.
Tarheelpilot
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Tarheelpilot
I agree. I was lucky enough to have drinks with the man. Truly remarkable individual.
Larry in TN
En-Route
Longevity is time withe the company, not time in seat.
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Kayoh@190
He didn't say because it's sort of assumed - the airlines all play it the same way. Let's say you're a fifth year FO and decide to upgrade. You'd become a 5th year captain. So in his chart - it's 15 years at the company. Upgrade could have been at any time.
Interestingly, for us 12 years is top of scale, so there wouldn't be any advantage to being at 15 years. I'm pretty sure all the big hitters have 12 year scales, but maybe not...
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
Yes, that's 15 years of company time - which goes by in the blink of an eye it seems.
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
wsuffa
Touchdown! Greaser!
I was on one flight he was on - all the drinks that day were on him. Lived not too far from his house in San Antonio. I agree fully that he was "one of a kind" and quite remarkable.