SkyWest starts flying for Alaska Airlines

You do realize that flight crew pay is a small percentage of overall costs? How can horizon compete when skywest has hundreds of CRJs in their fleet? You cant beat sky west cost structure when you're only flying a handful of planes in that type. With regards to pay, If you look at our W2's, we are among the highest paid regionals out there.
 
mrivc211 said:
You do realize that flight crew pay is a small percentage of overall costs? How can horizon compete when skywest has hundreds of CRJs in their fleet? You cant beat sky west cost structure when you're only flying a handful of planes in that type. With regards to pay, If you look at our W2's, we are among the highest paid regionals out there.
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You just took away the flying/aircraft of THE highest paid regional...so pardon me if I don't rush off to check your W2's. I'm sure that SkyWest also pays it FA's/MX less than Horizon does as well. You also realize that just because you have hundreds of CRJ's that it doesn't always mean you have the best cost structure, the Horizon aircraft were tailored to a type of flying that SkyWest doesn't normally do.

How would you, as a SkyWest pilot, feel if SkyWest said "We're going to lease the remaining EMB-120's to Great Lakes, because they have them too, but they do it much cheaper than you guys. We're also going to place them on the same routes that our pilot's have been flying and we're going to have to furlough as a result of it"?
 
Our mechanics average 90k. Not bad for a regional. I understand why you're upset, but I think you're emotions are speaking here rather than logic. Skywest just lost half our ord base to ASA but most of our pilots have yet to complain on any ofnthe furoms. I think we've all just understood this industry changes by day and nothing surprises us anymore. We may be the next air whiskey or aca......you never know.
 
mrivc211 said:
Our mechanics average 90k. Not bad for a regional. I understand why you're upset, but how can you operate a separate aircraft type with only a handful of planes.
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I'm not upset at SkyWest pilot's, FA's, etc...I'm upset at the Alaska Air Group managers. Unfortunately we have to deal with the deals they make, and it's a sucky situation for those of us caught in the trenches.

They said that Horizon had to make a 10% ROIC, which is ridiculous...when Horizon was making 6.5%. Basically we were given an unattainable goal so we couldn't make it and they would use it farm our flying to someone cheaper. In the end it's not really going to save $$...the loss taken by leasing the aircraft won't be offset by the savings of a lesser paid flight crew. MX cost will probably be similar. Fuel won't change as Alaska will be paying for that. It's just a poor decision all the way around on the part of Alaska Error Group.

I just hope they don't jerk you guys around to much, and I hope that if you do end up having to deadhead/jumpseat on Horizon that they will extend the professional courtesy and not giant feminine not so fresh products.

Maybe we'll get lucky and Alaska will decide to get 5 new Q400's (or more) to do intra-Alaska flying, Alaska uses those aircraft replaced in the state of Alaska to pursue new flying in the states/Mexico/Hawaii, and SkyWest will be able to place the leased aircraft somewhere else in their system. That way everyone has movement, no one gets furloughed/losses flying and we can all get back to discussing important matters...like beer, running oversquare, cancelling before getting to the gate and who/who not to call the FSDO about. :)
 
I hear ya man. Hopefully you and I won't need to worry about getting outbid too much longer when the mass retirements start happening.
 
mrivc211 said:
I hear ya man. Hopefully you and I won't need to worry about getting outbid too much longer when the mass retirements start happening.
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That would be ideal, thankfully I don't have to live through what all is going on right now. I've got a LOA till April 2013 with my corporate job, and this type of thing was the reason I was in no hurry to get back. It's a cut-throat world we live in with the regionals.

Hopefully the only outbidding we will have worry about will be for a new base, aircraft or weekends off at a major. :beer:
 
SurferLucas

What kind of workrules does Horizon have? I can't find a copy of their contract online and I'm looking for duty/trip rigs, MDG, WX and CX cancellation pay, holiday pay rules, and any bonus programs they get. Thanks.
 
GaTechKid said:
SurferLucas

What kind of workrules does Horizon have? I can't find a copy of their contract online and I'm looking for duty/trip rigs, MDG, WX and CX cancellation pay, holiday pay rules, and any bonus programs they get. Thanks.
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PM your email...I'll see if I can find a copy of the new contract lying around for you.
 
SurferLucas said:
You just took away the flying/aircraft of THE highest paid regional...so pardon me if I don't rush off to check your W2's.
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In order to make a claim that Horizon is the highest paid regional, you *have* to look at W2's (total compensation). You can't just point to Horizon's rates and say, "look, they're better paid than Expressjet" because that doesn't take Expressjet's really good vacation accrual and award system that allows for a ton of soft time. Similarly, Skywest has some work rules that boost our pay quite a bit that some majors don't have. I have no idea if Skywest's total compensation comes close to Horizon because I don't know anything about Horizon's work rules, but it's disingenuous to simply state "we get paid $15 more an hour so we must make more".
 
I'd like to get a fair comparison for sure. I grossed almost 53K off of $39/hr with 13.5 days off per month and I was wondering how much I would have made at Horizon.
 
As much as I grow tired of the 'total compensation' rhetoric at SkyW, it does have merit. We have some gems in our work rules such as full cancellation pay, full DH credit, block or better, etc that others don't. It really isn't just about hourly wage, although I wouldn't mind having more like anyone else.

In any case, I hope this is a win for both OO and QX in the long run. Hope Horizon orders more Q400s and does well with that market segment.
 
zmiller4 said:
In order to make a claim that Horizon is the highest paid regional, you *have* to look at W2's (total compensation). You can't just point to Horizon's rates and say, "look, they're better paid than Expressjet" because that doesn't take Expressjet's really good vacation accrual and award system that allows for a ton of soft time. Similarly, Skywest has some work rules that boost our pay quite a bit that some majors don't have. I have no idea if Skywest's total compensation comes close to Horizon because I don't know anything about Horizon's work rules, but it's disingenuous to simply state "we get paid $15 more an hour so we must make more".
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Horizon's more senior work group is part of what makes us the highest paid...not to mention when someone is talking about payrates, Horizon 9 out of 10 times is the standard because the payrates are that much higher.

Horizon's most junior Captain is a 2000 hire on the Q400, so let's assume just a straight reserve bid and the pilot doesn't fly over min guarantee. That's 86.3 hours per 35 day bid, so that's 10.42 bids a year. 86.3 x 10.42 = 899.25. 899.25 x 10th year Q400 Captain pay ($87) and you have $78,234.40 before taxes.

The most junior Captain on the CRJ is a 1996 hire, so there is 14 years seniority to hold a reserve Captain's slot...SkyWest is much lower. So take your 14 year Captain at $107/hour and put him on a straight reserve bid and he'll make $96,219.75 before taxes.

So in this case having a much higher payscale and having a more senior work group does come into play, according to APC, SkyWest's most junior Captain on the CRJ is a 2006 hire, and that CRJ700/900 is a 5% override from CRJ200's scales paid on block hours flown.

Does SkyWest plan to have a spare aircraft on hand for the PacNW ops? When we flew for Frontier, we leased a white CRJ to keep in Denver as the spare aircraft...that helped us hit our performance based bonus for every quarter we flew for them, but that's what made us to expensive after 3 years and why Frontier went with Republic flying the EMB-170's. So it's not the first time we've dealt with this situation...just the first time someone else is going to be flying a Horizon aircraft on a route that Horizon flew, just with a crew that makes less an hour.
 
bike21 said:
As much as I grow tired of the 'total compensation' rhetoric at SkyW, it does have merit. We have some gems in our work rules such as full cancellation pay, full DH credit, block or better, etc that others don't. It really isn't just about hourly wage, although I wouldn't mind having more like anyone else.

In any case, I hope this is a win for both OO and QX in the long run. Hope Horizon orders more Q400s and does well with that market segment.
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Let's be clear, cancellation pay, full DH credit and block or better shouldn't ever be considered gems, they should be considered a baseline for any contract.

Wouldn't want to lower the bar and all.
 
jtrain609 said:
Let's be clear, cancellation pay, full DH credit and block or better shouldn't ever be considered gems, they should be considered a baseline for any contract.

Wouldn't want to lower the bar and all.
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Sure, but to play devil's advocate - why don't some unionized carriers with contracts have these?
 
bike21 said:
full DH credit, block or better, etc that others don't.
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Is the DH for the actual flight? I thought it was only historical credit. Also you don't get your minimum for showing up to work when you are reporting for training, you only get the flight time. I wonder how this works at other carriers.
 
Bumblebee said:
Is the DH for the actual flight? I thought it was only historical credit. Also you don't get your minimum for showing up to work when you are reporting for training, you only get the flight time. I wonder how this works at other carriers.
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Full training months are paid at 80 hours at XJT.

Less than full months have are a 75 hour minimum.
 
Bumblebee said:
Is the DH for the actual flight? I thought it was only historical credit. Also you don't get your minimum for showing up to work when you are reporting for training, you only get the flight time. I wonder how this works at other carriers.
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DH credit is for historic value only, so if you de-ice 7 times and over block by 4 hours on a DH you only get paid the historic.

Bumblebee said:
what about travel days?
SkyWest pays daily min for training (I think?) help me I'm forgetting now.
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Min guarantee does not apply to/from training - it was a part of the last pay package but SAPA shelved it for the current one to work on other areas.
 
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