As a pilot the problem with upgrading early is seniority dictates QOL. A junior captain needs to work a junior base, fly a junior plane, and get whatever crappy trips are left in the schedule. That means that a senior First Officer would have to move or commute to a new city until they build enough seniority to go back to where they want to live all while working the worst schedule, or even worse sitting on reserve. Absolutely not worth the pay bump when you can wait a little longer and not have to deal with all that.
Have you done the mental math about where the pay would make it worth your while?
Hard to say, upgrade means going to a junior base which are almost universally high COL areas and you’d need to either move there or rent a crash pad for several months to several years until you can go back.
In my case, I’m lucky enough to have 0 ex-wives and no kids to put through college so I’m in a comfortable position money wise. It would take a pretty big chunk of money for me to take the hastle to upgrade until I could hold my base.
So they know the problem, pay increase isn’t worth the bullshit surrounding the promotion, and they know the fix.
Will they create more stable schedules or bump the pay to make it worth their captain’s time?
Fuck no. Let’s just cancel a bunch of flights because no one wants to work
And then bitch about it publicly to try and create pressure on the pilots. Sorry UA, the class warfare stuff is out of the bag, I’m with the pilots
Unless you think the airline can just eat the cost of raises, I’m not so sure it’s a simple case of class warfare. Airlines operate on very thin margins, so any increase in costs would have to lead to increased prices for customers.
Stop carrying water for millionaires.
Airlines make record profits every year, and are run on razor thin margins. The wildest thing is that the flights themselves are a loss leader for the insanely profitable travel points scam they’ve been running since the 60s.
Stop extracting 80% of the profits for the investment class from the tourism industry and paying the pilots triple their current wages would be simple.
Never believe a corporation when they complain about labor costs. It’s always a lie
Stop extracting 80% of the profits for the investment class from the tourism industry and paying the pilots triple their current wages would be simple.
not that simple. stop extracting profits, then no one wants ownership of the company anymore.
I’m sure the employees do.
so you’re jumping from a relatively minor quirk in labor staffing to a socialist takeover of a multibillion dollar business. be realistic, it ain’t happening.
Other than employees already run the business.
It sounds like they need to figure out how to merge the two lists to give junior captains some time not fully on call. Maybe allow senior first officers to be standby captains one week out of the month to ease them into the role.
Or just increase pay. Supply and demand.
The senior first officers are noting QoL issues as the major reason they are not choosing to be junior captains. If a 40% increase in salary isn’t enough to get people to make the jump, maybe the solution is to change the quality of life for junior captains.
It might also be cheaper for the airline to make the cutoff more flexible in a way that is acceptable to the pilots’ union.
World News.
