Lots of Envoy, Piedmont, PSA flights canceled today
- Thread starter JOEFRIDAY2
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amorris311
Well-Known Member
He's referring to RJ domestic FO's only.
BobDDuck
Island Bus Driver
Your metric doesn't depend on the number of seats on a plane but rather how many passengers are in those seats average.
Let's assume 80% load factors. That means that a 50 seat RJ will have 40 passengers on it. Let's use PSA's (terrible!!!!!) four year FO payscale of $39 for the example and since you think 2 hours is long lets go with a 90 minute flight.
So for the 90 minutes of flying the FO will earn $58.50, or $1.46 per passenger.
For a 90 seat RJ the guy is making .82 per passenger.
Nowhere in there do I see .30 or even .70 cents.
And just for comparison, a 4 year Delta 717 FO making $112 an hour flying around a 110 seat jet (with 88 passengers in it for the 80% load factor) on the same 90 minute route that the CRJ flew is making about $1.9 per passenger.
And finally, the equation totally breaks down as the average load factor may be about 80% but that doesn't take into account ferry and repo flights with no passengers on board.
It's a terrible metric to use.
JustinS
Well-Known Member
With the new Part 117 rules, it's highly unlikely that someone would be timed out on the 1,000 hours in 365 days as it is now a rolling 365 days, and I'm sure the airlines would build schedules to try and avoid a person timing out on that. Who knows though, maybe I'm wrong. Anyone seen someone time out on the 1,000 hours in 365 with the new 117 rules?
JOEFRIDAY2
Well-Known Member
Let's get into reality here.
1. You chose the TOP PAY RATE FOR A PSA FIRST OFFICER. That is not the rate they that new hires are getting. The rate for new hires is $24 per hour.
2. Most PSA flights are not 90 minutes. Most are closer to an hour. There are some 90 minute flights, but no where near as many as the 1 hour flights.
So lets use some real numbers and some real flights. I just picked the four flights that PSA cancelled yesterday.
Flight 5110 Charlotte to Williamsburg. 282 statute miles. 1 hour 6 minutes. Average fare per passenger $132.82.
50 seat RJ. 80% load factor would be 40 passengers. 1st year FO pay at $24 per hour. That equals .66 cents per passenger.
Flight 5061 Chattanooga to Charlotte. 241 statute miles. 53 minutes. Average fare per passenger $121.51. 50 seat RJ 80% load factor would be 40 passengers. 1st year FO pay at $24 per hour. That equals .53 cents per passenger.
Flight 5256 Williamsburg to Charlotte. 282 statute miles. 1 hour 2 minutes. Average fare per passenger $121.51. 50 seat RJ. 80% load factor would be 40 passengers. 1st year FO pay at $24 per hour. That equals .62 cents per passenger.
Flight 5038 Gulfport to Charlotte. 342 statute miles. 1 hour 28 minutes. Average fare per passenger $155. 50 seat RJ 80% load factor would be 40 passengers. 1st year FO pay at $24 per hour. That equals .88 cents per passenger.
Here is an Envoy flight that was cancelled yesterday:
Flight 3286 from Shreveport to Dallas. 190 statute miles. 37 minutes. Average fare per passenger $185.99. 50 seat ERJ. 80% load factor would be 40 passengers. 1st year FO pay at $26 per hour. That equals .40 cents per passenger paid to the Airline Pilot First Officer. If all of the 50 seats happen to get sold then it works out to .32 cents a passenger.
There is NO REASON THAT ANY PROFESSIONAL AIRLINE PILOT SHOULD EVER BE PAID THESE KINDS OF POVERTY WAGES.
I can understand why folks like you don't like to see the pay broken down this way. It looks like hell and you should be ashamed of yourselves if you think this is somehow ok.
The price paid to the Airline Pilot First Officer, per passenger, is a very relevant metric to use.
There are several reasons for this. The first reason is that the money that the airline uses to pay the pilots comes from the passengers. (AKA customers)
The second reason being is because the airlines always insist they can not pay the pilots more because the passengers would not stand for an increase in the price of airline tickets.
As you can see from the above numbers, there is plenty of money from the fares collected, from the customers, to pay the pilots a professional living wage. The airlines just choose not to. And they brainwash folks like you that this is somehow ok.
In all of these typical examples, the Airline Pilot First Officer (half of the pilots of the airline) qualifies for food stamps. That's not fair to the pilot, the passengers or the American tax payer.
Joe
Then it would be a valid metric to use only when comparing RJ domestic FO's to other RJ domestic FO's.
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One of the issues that I have with this is that your number is arbitrary and includes variables that do not affect the pilot pay at all. $0.32 per passenger means nothing if the company can change the number of aircraft on that particular route and change the number for better or for worse while the pilot sees absolutely no change in his take-home pay. If they double the number of aircraft and load factors are cut in half, does the pilot make half as much money?
Or lets talk about two RJ FO's that work for the same company, same seniority, same pay, and one bids short legs and the other likes long routes. It is possible that by your metrics one pilot is paid $0.80 per passenger while the other is paid $0.40. Is one pilot paid twice as much as the other?
I'm don't see any issue with telling people that FO's make $25K a year (or whatever the number is). As long as we use numbers that really mean something. Do we talk about the low wages of McDonald's servers in terms of the cost per customer that they wait on?
If you want a ridiculously low number to use for psychological reasons then why not use "cost per passenger per mile" instead of "cost per passenger per flight"?
I'm not sure where you are coming up with that little rant nor if you think it applies to anyone here, so I see no reason to address it based on anything I've posted. Maybe someone else can jump in if they think you are talking about them.
The money that ANY company uses to pay their employees come from....where?
I know that you were not quoting me, but I'm pretty sure that BobDDuck, like myself, has not been brainwashed concerning the wage levels in this industry.
Besides, each individual airline chooses not to raise fares because they know, and it has been proven time and time again, that if only one of them raises their prices their passengers will move to another airline and they will end up with LESS money to pay their employees. There are very smart people/computers working to set fares that generate the maximum amount of revenue possible. The way for this to happen is if all of the airlines raise their wages together, incrementally, and all agree to pay their employees more. I can just hear the cries to Congress about price-fixing and collusion and fraud already, can't you?
Look, I'm on your side. I'm just not a fan of making up metrics to try to get an emotional response when the real numbers work just fine. We can make up metrics to make it sound like Warren Buffet is underpaid and lots of people understand that the numbers can be made to look like almost anything, so why dilute the message?
As another example of how these numbers don't really have any intrinsic value, I could apply the same metric to a piston twin charter pilot making the same $25k a year as our hypothetical RJ FO. Only the charter pilot may be making $15 or $20 per passenger per flight instead of the pennies the RJ FO does. Is he actually paid 50 or 60 times more than the RJ FO? Isn't it obvious that he makes PLENTY of money, so doesn't deserve any notice? The flip side of this is that passengers riding in a chartered aircraft often could cough up another $50 or $100 a flight and notice it on their bottom line even less than Joe Average airline passenger would notice another $0.50 on his flight.
The take-away for me is that if your intention is to show how minimal the impact on each passenger would be, then use those numbers. "To raise an RJ FO's wages from $25k per year to $40k per year would cost, on average, an additional $0.30 per flight per passenger" is a valid statement in my mind.
deadstick
Well-Known Member
Didn't this downhill run start about 25 years ago? For the most part, professional pilots are a smart group of people. I think there is no reason that any professional airline pilot (hired in the last 25 years) should ever be surprised by these kinds of wages. This is an unstable career field with furloughs, base closures, commuting, junior manning, crew schedulers, where the bottom line can go from black to red based on the price of crude.
So if this per seat metric is so great, why was everybody crucifying Great Lakes for the pay on the 1900? The FO's didn't make much, but they didn't fly a big shiney jet. A few years ago, the usual response was that it was the job, not the plane. I wasn't with Lakes, but flew the 1900 and loved the hell outta it. I didn't make a lot of money, but I didn't expect to, either.
GypsyPilot
Mohawk Town
Wait... So you flew on Christmas, during a snow storm, and you're surprised you got stuck?
B767
Well-Known Member
It's going to be REALLY easy to time out with the new rest rules. All you have to do is average 83.33 hours of block a month. That's pretty easy to do at the regional level. Where as the clock used to reset on Jan 1, it doesn't anymore.
We already have issues with guys timing out where I work. The company was short during the summer and asked for help so a lot of guys picked stuff up. Now they're close to timing out and our "representation" is suggesting guys bid a couple months of reserve.
elmetal
Ain't nobody got time for that
yep,
especially when understaffed. my friends on the ERJ are getting SCHEDULED 99-100 hours of block per month in ORD, our better staffed of the ERJ bases.
JustinS
Well-Known Member
I guess soon the airlines may have some choices to make depending on how true or false this "shortage" thing really is. They will either have to reduce their regional feed, and cities will get cut, planes will be parked, and the number of pilots will stay the same or increasingly shrink at the regionals until the regionals all but collapse all while pay never really changes. OR pay will have to increase to minimize the compromise of the regional route structure in order to continue to draw in more pilots.
In the end, the consumer will be the one to pay. Having to drive further to a larger city, or pay more for a ticket to adequately cover the costs needed to safely and effectively operate the regional model. The mainlines can play with the whipsaw all day long, but when there becomes no one more to whipsaw, or the whipsawed carriers begin to bleed the mainline's money, that's bad for business overall.
It's interesting to see that some of the somewhat middle of the road regionals as far as pay are seeing cancellation issues due to crew issues. How are other regionals fairing right now? Horizon? SkyWest? AWAC? Mesa? Endeavor? Compass? etc.?
We can have pilots on forums and in the work place justify the low pay all day long, but at the end of the day you may have an entire group of people who avoided the career due to the pay issues. If that becomes big enough of an issue, the airlines from a business perspective will be forced to do something to remain profitable... One can only hope that means a change in pay at the bottom eventually.
In the end, the consumer will be the one to pay. Having to drive further to a larger city, or pay more for a ticket to adequately cover the costs needed to safely and effectively operate the regional model. The mainlines can play with the whipsaw all day long, but when there becomes no one more to whipsaw, or the whipsawed carriers begin to bleed the mainline's money, that's bad for business overall.
It's interesting to see that some of the somewhat middle of the road regionals as far as pay are seeing cancellation issues due to crew issues. How are other regionals fairing right now? Horizon? SkyWest? AWAC? Mesa? Endeavor? Compass? etc.?
We can have pilots on forums and in the work place justify the low pay all day long, but at the end of the day you may have an entire group of people who avoided the career due to the pay issues. If that becomes big enough of an issue, the airlines from a business perspective will be forced to do something to remain profitable... One can only hope that means a change in pay at the bottom eventually.
Boris Badenov
Fortis Leader
I understand the sentiment, but one could make a pretty good case that one ought never expect to get stuck. Can't carry everyone you sold a ticket to? Sell fewer tickets. Or buy more planes.
Boris Badenov
Fortis Leader
OR the bar for entry will be lowered back down to 250 hours and a pulse (200 hours if you gave up women for college), with MPL licenses and "cadet" indentured-servitude schemes for all! Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, suckers!
GypsyPilot
Mohawk Town
It sucks, I agree. For whatever reason now, Christmas and other holidays are EXTREMELY busy. I flew into DEN Xmas morning to conclude my trip, and I have never seen the ramp that busy. Neither had my captain, or our United jumpseater. It was just unbelievable. This was in the morning, before the snow came. I can't even imagine how jacked up that place was once the storm hit in the evening.
Another thing about Denver and the United Express ops is that ground handling is now done by a company called Simplicity. The amount of incompetence on the ramp now is staggering, absolutely beyond belief. It has consistently screwed up every trip I've done over the past month (since they took over), and has left countless Pax stranded after missing connections. I don't know what United was thinking by choosing that company, but it's ugly and will continue to get worse as the winter progresses.
chrisreedrules
Master Blaster
Or another option is once US consumers have a decrease in air service and an increase in fairs, it further opens the doors for foreign airlines to come in and do our flying.
z987k
Well-Known Member
I'm sure it's the same people on the ground. Just like when united Changed ground handling in Dulles. It was the exact same rampers as the week before. They just had a new name on their shirt/vest.
B767
Well-Known Member
It's not. I'm sure a few are the same. But for the most part they hired a BUNCH of new people. And United failed to tell simplicity that they have to do the COMO in DEN, so they have no clue how to do it. A lot of them don't speak English too, or at least very well. Have had to call COMO back 4+ times before. And from what I've been told a lot of the new rampers are from Africa, but lots of different parts, so they don't speak the same languages. Makes things interesting sometimes.
They definitely dropped the ball on transitioning the ground handling in DEN. It's absolutely atrocious now.
GypsyPilot
Mohawk Town
Agree with B767, it's definitely not the same people. I've been based in DEN for several years and have come to know the SKW folks. They split. Half these new guys don't even speak English. No, I'm not kidding. It is unbelievably bad.
Thank God every trip I have in DEN next month leaves DEN and doesn't come back until the last leg of the last day.
z987k
Well-Known Member
Sounds just like IAD!