I was doing some yard work today and my brain was wondering. What do you think the feasibility of a pilot owned and operated airline would be. I don't mean a pilot starts an airline, I am sure that has been done.
I was thinking more along the lines of pilots are the share holders and decision makers. We vote in management and they are answerable to us. We set our pay scales, we set our routes, we decide which aircraft to fly and we have a supporting cast who run the daily operations.
I obviously have not worked out all the logistics of such an operation. I am just wondering what others think and if anything like this has been tried.
It's been tried a number of times: United, Kiwi, People's Express. All of these companies had employee-owners. They all failed. They failed because, even though the employees were the owners and the risk-takers, they still thought like line employees.
A good example is United Airlines. In 1994, the pilots, mechanics, and ground agents took wage concessions in exchange for ownership (stock), and seats on the board of directors. They hired Gerald Greenwald to run their company for them, because they thought they could control him.
Greenwald did what managers do, which is try to run a profitable company. This means he made decisions that were not necessarily employee friendly, but benefitted the company. Guess what? The employees got mad and got rid of him. They hired James Goodwin, a long time employee. Goodwin made decisions that were more employee friendly. The pilot contract of 2000 is an example. So now the employees are happy, but the company is horribly positioned to compete. I'm sure you know the rest of the story
The problem with employees calling the shots from the line is that employees think like employees. They think in terms of maximizing their pay and days off while at the same time minimizing their work. It doesn't work. Employees see only their little piece of the puzzle, and they don't see how it fits in with the bigger picture. That's what management does, or at least is supposed to do.
Consider this. Let's say you start an airline, but remain on the line as a pilot. What are you going to do when Crew Scheduling tells you that you don't have enough pilots? Hire more? What will you do when Finance tells you that your crew costs are too high? Lower their pay? Make them fly more? What about when Purchasing tells you that fuel costs too much? Tell your pilots to carry less fuel and fly slower? What do you do when Marketing tells you that your losing passengers because your flights take longer? You see the problems here?
The upshot of all this is that you can't run any kind of large business successfully from the line. There's reason you don't see that kind of business model out there. You either have to step out of the cockpit, or let someone else call the shots.
anic:
