FL270
New Member
Re: Delta Pilot\'s Brilliant CEO sticker!
On another message board, a user (who happens to be a Delta pilot) did this analysis of pay rates at several airlines ... it is revealing.
I don't have a Delta contract in front of me, so I'm going to pull salary numbers out of the air. In a few hours, I'll board a RDU-CVG flight on Delta, on an MD-88. The aircraft has 142 seats. Let's say the Captain earns $160 per hour and the FO $110. Each flight attendant earns $30. Once again ... these are just guesstimates ... but should be approximately accurate for illustration purposes. So, the captain earns $1.13 per seat per hour. The FO earns $0.77. Each FA earns $0.21. The total compensation of the crew per seat per hour would be $2.53 (three FAs). The flight is blocked at 1+32. For the flight, the total compensation from one seat to the crew is $3.88. For the entire aircraft, the crew costs Delta $552 for the flight.
Now, I paid $229 for my ticket, which is a four-leg trip from RDU-CVG-PIT and back. Delta actually gets about $180 of that, the rest being government taxes and the like. 25% of that applies to the one flight I've illustrated above. So, I paid to Delta $45, hypothetically speaking, for this one leg. A little under $4 pays for the entire crew.
This example is grossly oversimplified, of course. But, if 100 seats are filled on the plane today, and the average fare collected for this leg is $60 (remembering that most of the pax will probably be connecting and flying round-trip), Delta collected $6000 in revenue for providing this flight. The crew cost $552. Even after benefits, etc., there's another $5000 out there from this one flight. Doesn't seem to me like the cost of the labor is the big problem ... the problem is two-fold. Poor control of costs in other areas (executive compensation may be one) and (as any airline boss will tell you) a weak revenue environment with almost zero pricing power.
In other words, if you take your scissors and cut two blades of grass, does it make your whole yard look any better?
FL270
On another message board, a user (who happens to be a Delta pilot) did this analysis of pay rates at several airlines ... it is revealing.
I don't have a Delta contract in front of me, so I'm going to pull salary numbers out of the air. In a few hours, I'll board a RDU-CVG flight on Delta, on an MD-88. The aircraft has 142 seats. Let's say the Captain earns $160 per hour and the FO $110. Each flight attendant earns $30. Once again ... these are just guesstimates ... but should be approximately accurate for illustration purposes. So, the captain earns $1.13 per seat per hour. The FO earns $0.77. Each FA earns $0.21. The total compensation of the crew per seat per hour would be $2.53 (three FAs). The flight is blocked at 1+32. For the flight, the total compensation from one seat to the crew is $3.88. For the entire aircraft, the crew costs Delta $552 for the flight.
Now, I paid $229 for my ticket, which is a four-leg trip from RDU-CVG-PIT and back. Delta actually gets about $180 of that, the rest being government taxes and the like. 25% of that applies to the one flight I've illustrated above. So, I paid to Delta $45, hypothetically speaking, for this one leg. A little under $4 pays for the entire crew.
This example is grossly oversimplified, of course. But, if 100 seats are filled on the plane today, and the average fare collected for this leg is $60 (remembering that most of the pax will probably be connecting and flying round-trip), Delta collected $6000 in revenue for providing this flight. The crew cost $552. Even after benefits, etc., there's another $5000 out there from this one flight. Doesn't seem to me like the cost of the labor is the big problem ... the problem is two-fold. Poor control of costs in other areas (executive compensation may be one) and (as any airline boss will tell you) a weak revenue environment with almost zero pricing power.
In other words, if you take your scissors and cut two blades of grass, does it make your whole yard look any better?
FL270