A letter to X Airlines, and ALL Regionals for that matter.

Winglet

Well-Known Member
Recently I was contacted out of the blue by an airline expressing interest in having me fill out a formal application so that they could bring me to interview. The email was not a generic e-mail and was clearly written specifically for me. So I called them up. The HR lady was very pleasant and she did everything in her power to answer my questions. She said that she found my resume online and that she was really interested in me. I have been on the phone with many a recruiter in the past and this one legitimately sounded like she was Googling for pilots! She wanted me to fill out a formal application to the airline. (Regional Airline).

A week went by and I hadn't gotten back to her s I didnt have interest in the potential job offer. Yesterday I received another e-mail with the following text:

"We are still very interested in you, please complete the attached and return as soon as possible. Hope to hear from you soon!"

The text below is my reply.

(I copied the letter from Word. Looks like the table got kind of screwed up but you still get the picture)

===================================================================

Dear Ms. #####,

I would like to thank you for expressing interest in having me apply for ####### Airlines. I must admit that I have never had an airline contact me out of blue because they found my qualifications online. I am both honored and flattered at the same time.

When we spoke over the phone you were very kind in answering my questions. You were patient and insightful and went above and beyond to get me the answers I needed in order to make an informed decision. I feel that I should return the favor in kind to make sure that you understand why I must decline your kind offer.

Ever since I have been a child I have aspired to be the “guy up front”. The suit, tie and epaulettes are much more to me than a uniform. They are the aspirations, dedication, sacrifices and hard work of an 8 year old with a dream who grew up doing everything in his power to achieve that goal. I managed to achieve it once before and I was shocked to find out how much one needed to sacrifice in order to live on the wages provided by the airlines. I lived a year and eight months of my life with nothing to my name. Spending everything I had on the cost of a crash pad and food because what I was paid wouldn’t allow me to afford rent at the base I was assigned. To top if off, the airline I worked for made very poor business decisions and ultimately dissolved in to space. Since that time I found sustainable employment in aviation outside the airlines.

The thought of going back to the airlines creeps to my mind every now and then. It is after all the dream I have chased for 22 years. However my last experience with an airline taught me that quality of life and financial stability are much more important than a suit, tie and a turbine aircraft.

I spent the last week or so since we communicated running the numbers and after I show them to you, I hope you will understand my point. The final column on the right is what I would be left with based on your airlines current pay scale assuming 80 hours of credit a month. I am padding the minimum credit hours with an extra 5 hours. The table below is not taking in to account expenses for food and gas during the month or trying to put something aside for savings for those rainy days.


Year of Employment

Monthly gross Salary based on80 hours of credit.

After Est. Taxes

After Mortgage

After Car Payment
(does not apply after year 4)

After Car Insurance

After Health Insurance

After Cellphone

After Misc House Expenses (bills, internet etc)

1

$2,160

$1,772

$422

$172

$65

-$95

-$173

-$433


2

$2,480

$2,014

$664

$250

$143

-$17

-$107

-$367


3

$2,640

$2,165

$815

$565

$458

$298

$208

-$52

4

$2,720

$2,231

$881

$631

$524

$364

$274

$14

5

$2,800

$2,296

$946

$946

$839

$679

$589

$329


So as you can see, even with padding the monthly minimum credit hours by 5 extra hours, it will still take me till year 5 in order to live comfortably based on the wages being offered by ####### Airlines. Based on these rough numbers - before I factor in normal food and gas expenses - by the time I reach year 4 with ####### I would have amassed $10,344 worth of debt.

Our industry is one where experienced and skilled pilots are not worth anything to airline management. Lets face it, money talks. Why should airlines pay for skilled labor when the airlines could hire commercial pilots pilots whose licenses still had wet ink on them. The era of the 300 Hour airline pilot is over. Nowadays with the new regulations you will need pilots who have over 1500 hours. Of course that part is not news to your company. I am sure that the HR departments in many a airline are aware that the number of eligible candidates just got significantly smaller. What I am not sure that they know of is that not ONLY is there a requirement to have an ATP pilot for airline operations, but that the process of obtaining the ATP certificate has drastically changed. The new changes will make it much more difficult to obtain the ATP certificate. It raises the academic level of the course and in doing so, raises its costs tremendously. This will make it un-obtainable from a financial perspective to many pilots. I was lucky that I managed to get mine done before the rule change. If I was doing it now, I couldn’t afford the new ATP courses. This means that out of the smaller pool of pilots that are available now, you will have an even smaller one in the future. Furthermore, the future pilots who DO make it and are eligible for hire based upon the new rules, will have other options available to them that pay better and offer a higher quality of life than the airlines can provide.

During our discussion you mentioned that you were impressed by the online resume that you found and were particularly interested in me because I already have my ATP, multiple thousands of hours, unique flying experience, a Type Rating on the aircraft flown by your company and previous 121 experience .
I don’t wish to toot my own horn here, but all this equates to a relatively skilled pilot.

A fair livable wage isn't too much to ask. After all, we airline pilots routinely work 14 hour days and yet get compensated for as little as 4 of those 14 hours. We routinely work on minimum rest times and yet we have hundreds of lives in our hands on a day to day basis. We are away from our families for up to 5 days at a time and 20 days in a month. We miss holidays, birthdays, BIRTHS, school plays and we do so because we know and understand that the public needs to fly. This is one of the most demanding jobs out there both physically and mentally.

I do not live an extravagant life style. Its pretty modest. I am not asking for much, however I think that #######, as well as the rest of the regional airline industry should realize that a skilled pilot at the controls is worth a fair livable wage. A fair livable wage is one that allows a pilot to live comfortably and not require a second job on their days off. In my opinion, a fair starting wage would be what ####### calls “Year 5 FO pay”.

A fair livable wage is not too much to ask. On the contrary, it is the bare minimum to ensure that your airline is staffed by skilled, professional, well rested and safe pilots. Unfortunately, looking at the current prospect of going in to over $10K of debt until I would be able to sustain myself with #######, I am forced to decline your offer to apply for an FO position at the otherwise fine ####### Airlines.

I sincerely thank you for your time,

Ben Zwebner
 
Would be great if you copied it to aviation publications, ALPA mag, and a few newspapers. Funny though it is, it's wasted on the HR flunky who has no power over compensation at that airline.

If you're gonna make a point and back it up with numbers, go public and do it with gusto! I see you on a talk show with Sulley...

Merry Christmas and good for you!
Out of curiosity, what do you do outside of aviation?
 
Would be great if you copied it to aviation publications, ALPA mag, and a few newspapers. Funny though it is, it's wasted on the HR flunky who has no power over compensation at that airline.

If you're gonna make a point and back it up with numbers, go public and do it with gusto! I see you on a talk show with Sulley...

Merry Christmas and good for you!
Out of curiosity, what do you do outside of aviation?

I do nothing outside of aviation. I hold 2.5 aviation jobs. None of which are regional airlines. All of which pay fairly.
 
Mesa....? I believe they offered a class date to antoher JC member who did not even apply their.... Desperate times call for desperate measures....
 
I've asked before and there's never been a reply, but with how regionals make their money.....dependant on the airline they themselves serve........how much financial leeway do they have to increase pilot (or even FA or maintenance) pay, or even other costs? It's not like they make their own money as an independant entity; that was tried already with Independance Air. Still, pay should be reasonable, but how much "reasonable" is really possible?
 
I've asked before and there's never been a reply, but with how regionals make their money.....dependant on the airline they themselves serve........how much financial leeway do they have to increase pilot (or even FA or maintenance) pay, or even other costs? It's not like they make their own money as an independant entity; that was tried already with Independance Air. Still, pay should be reasonable, but how much "reasonable" is really possible?

Five to ten bucks more per flight hour would make a world of difference.
Per hour, that equates to ten to twenty cents per seat per hour on a fifty seat jet. A dollar per passenger for a two hour flight would cover it.

Do you really think that can't be managed?
 
I wish I could like this more than once. Thank you for posting this.

For all those reasons above is why I still refuse to apply to an airline. I love aviation, I love flying, I wouldn't want to do anything else, but the things that we all put up with is absolutely ridiculous. In the past 5 years I've build up my time, experience and knowledge, and instead of moving forward, my next step may very well be a step back in both salary and QOL if I chose to go to a regional. Friends I've graduated school with who have jobs in offices are working up the ladder. Their experience and skill is rewarded with bonuses, better pay and QOL. Instead in our industry, an industry focused on professionalism and safety, we ignore the skilled and qualified for cheap labor.
 
Five to ten bucks more per flight hour would make a world of difference.
Per hour, that equates to ten to twenty cents per seat per hour on a fifty seat jet. A dollar per passenger for a two hour flight would cover it.

Do you really think that can't be managed?

It should be more than five to ten bucks in my opinion. I'd just love to see a cost breakdown to see where and how the all the $$$ are divided up in their fixed-cose structure, and thus where flexibility exists.. Be interesting.
 
I didn't write it, don't shoot me.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303296604577450581396602106

PJ-BH720A_MIDSE_G_20120606215401.jpg




Updated June 6, 2012 10:23 p.m. ET
On an airplane carrying 100 passengers, how many customers does it take, on average, to cover the cost of the flight?

The Middle Seat asked US Airways and consulting firm Oliver Wyman to crunch airline expenses down to the percentages that an individual passenger pays, taking a hard look at costs of running an airline. US Airways created a hypothetical flight of 100 passengers. Each one paid the average $146 fare for a domestic flight ($292 round-trip), plus $18 each in fees and add-ons, based on a year's worth of data ending March 31. The bottom line: There is very little wiggle room on the plane for profit.

Somebody on every flight helps cover crash insurance and compensation paid for bumped passengers or lost luggage. The person beside you on your next trip may be partly paying to repair baggage carts or to buy and maintain passenger oxygen and defibrillators.

"It's like a wristwatch. You only see the face and hands, but all the parts inside are really necessary," said former airline chief executive Gordon Bethune. "Those bags don't get downstairs by themselves. All those things that move bags have to be purchased and then they break. It never stops."

Fuel now is by far the biggest cost for airlines—greater than even airline salaries. On that 100-passenger US Airways flight, the tickets and fees of 29 people pay just for the fuel to make the trip. (Salaries are the second-highest cost, with 20 passengers covering personnel paychecks.)

Oliver Wyman's research pegs fuel costs at an even bigger percentage of costs for the airline industry as a whole. Bigger carriers with longer flights tend to spend a bigger portion of their money at the fuel pump. The industry spent more than 34% of its revenue on fuel—it takes the fares of more than one-third of passengers on a flight, on average, to pay for the gas.

Airline gas mileage has improved over the years, the result of filling more seats on each flight, replacing multiple trips on small planes with fewer trips on larger aircraft and replacing older planes with newer, more fuel-efficient jets. In 2000, U.S. airlines burned 28.6 gallons of jet fuel per passenger, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Last year, that improved to 22.5 gallons per passenger. The industry is using less fuel but carrying more passengers. But the fuel bill tripled—airlines spent $32 billion more on fuel in 2011 than in 2000.

After fuel and salaries come ownership costs—buying and leasing planes. That includes the cost of spare engines and insuring planes in case of accidents. In the hypothetical 100-passenger flight, 16 people cover these costs.

Another 14 passengers cover the collective federal taxes paid by passengers, US Airways calculated. That money helps fund the Federal Aviation Administration, plus the Sept. 11 security fees that cover much of the cost of Transportation Security Administration screening, and facility charges that most airports add to tickets. Fuel taxes paid by airlines are counted with other fuel costs. In the end, passengers pay more in government taxes and fees than they do for baggage fees and other add-ons.

Total maintenance costs equal 11 passengers on the plane of 100, according to US Airways, which built its own repair shop in Philadelphia just for the trucks, baggage carts and the tugs that haul them. That is a tiny part of all the airline's maintenance responsibilities. Planes' parts often break. Every few months they undergo routine maintenance. Every few years more intensive maintenance is performed. And once every five or six years planes literally get taken apart and put back together.

Cost of 'Free' Soft Drinks
Nine passengers cover the "other" category—everything from catering (the soft drink you get free on most, but not all, carriers) to compensating passengers for bumping them from flights and paying to deliver or replace lost baggage. Food costs—mostly for first-class meals—add up to less than 2% of airline costs, according to Oliver Wyman's research. Rental fees for airport gates and ticket counters also factor into the big "other" category. So do regular business things like advertising and legal fees.

Landing fees eat up more than 2% of airline revenue, according to Oliver Wyman, so that it takes two passengers out of 100 to cover the use of airport runways and taxiways. Airports charge airlines by the weight of the airplane.

With 99 passengers accounted for, what does that leave the airline in terms of profit? One passenger.

"It's not exactly one, but we rounded up," said Robert Isom, chief operating officer at US Airways Group Inc.

Airlines don't have some of the expenses of other industries. Research and development is virtually nonexistent—innovation tends to come from airplane makers, seat makers or other businesses that supply the carriers. While airlines have lots of inventory expense, it isn't like what Boeing Co. BA -0.10% or other manufacturers encounter.

The Weather Variable
But airline operating costs are off the charts compared with other industries. In a business where much of the work is done outside, routine storms can eat into margins. And there are many moving parts to flying people through the air, and many safety costs required by regulation.

While ticket revenue pays the bulk of these costs, "ancillary revenue" supplements the flight by another $18 per person on a 100-passenger flight. That includes fees for checked baggage, seat assignments, ticket penalties and revenue from cargo.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, baggage fees for the U.S. airline industry last year totaled a hefty $3.4 billion, or roughly $5 for every passenger boarded. Cancellation and change fees totaled $2.4 billion, or more than $3 for every passenger.

It's these myriad fees that can be most maddening to passengers—customers who now pay higher fares yet feel like they're getting less service. But these fees, in part, offset the expense of operating an airline.

"It's a crazy business," Mr. Bethune said. "There are so many costs you could never articulate it all."
 
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