The dark side of the pilot shortage.
- Thread starter gliderboy
- Start date
ChasenSFO
hen teaser
From my operational experience at a major airport.
Delta calls me:
"Hey, we have no gates, can we park a plane on the international terminal so it doesn't have to hold?"
I call Southwest:
"Hey, this plane has been out here for 30 minutes with 4 open gates, park it."
"No...the ramp supervisor won't let us make a gate change because one ramp crew will do more work than another and it will screw up the break times"(as a plane burns fuel and clogs the ramp for 30+ mins).
See the difference? I sure as hell do. Everyday.
Southwest was a great airline pre-AirTran(I know ATN won't agree), but since then, Southwest is swiftly on their way to becoming Frontier with frills and mainline employees disguised as a legacy carrier on the surface.
Delta calls me:
"Hey, we have no gates, can we park a plane on the international terminal so it doesn't have to hold?"
I call Southwest:
"Hey, this plane has been out here for 30 minutes with 4 open gates, park it."
"No...the ramp supervisor won't let us make a gate change because one ramp crew will do more work than another and it will screw up the break times"(as a plane burns fuel and clogs the ramp for 30+ mins).
See the difference? I sure as hell do. Everyday.
Southwest was a great airline pre-AirTran(I know ATN won't agree), but since then, Southwest is swiftly on their way to becoming Frontier with frills and mainline employees disguised as a legacy carrier on the surface.
av8tr1
"Never tell me the odds!"
I'll agree you can tell the former airtran guys from the legacy Southwest guys. The flight decks are more subdued with the airtran guys.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Southwest is what destroyed the industry. Every passenger who wants to know why their seat pitch is nothing and they have to pay for every little thing they get on every airline? Blame Southworst. The originator of the race to the bottom.
Apophis
Resident Iconoclast
I also blame Southworst for allowing Boeing to continue producing 737s.
nibake
Powder hound
Can you expound on this? I've only been around "just recently" so how do you mean, exactly, and what was it like before?
Not going to rehash the whole one percenter/peasant argument here, but this comment seems out of touch. Many if not most of the people I fly with are millionaires and honestly, tell me of one pilot at SJW that has a better schedule than what some of the feeders can offer? The argument of having made big money on stocks and tech companies actually holds more water coming from someone who flies for a FedEx feeder!
Also anecdotally, every SW flight I have been on has been far less miserable than the SJW flights tend to be. Is first class really just a surcharge to not treat you like $@#$? Also, the 737s are nicer to ride on than the old MDs.
z987k
Well-Known Member
Junior at a major might not have a good schedule... I don't know because I haven't done that. But even in craptastic ACMI land, we have better schedules than a fedex (or ups) feeder.
Ecl!pse
Well-Known Member
I agree with and respect much of what you say here regarding business principles, but this is the emotion speaking. Don’t blame Southwest for creating a sustainable business model that has weathered several cycles, vs the numerous carriers that have come and gone since deregulation.
z987k
Well-Known Member
I think we've been in aviation about the same amount of time, and I cannot recall when this has ever been the case.
I remember flying alongside the fedex guys when I was at AMF on the same routes, and yes there were the 20 year lifers in those vans, but it didn't seem like something to aspire to. More like some guy with almost no ambition, incredibly complacent and got comfortable. They were making more than us, but not so much that anyone thought that those guys had made it.
NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
I've never flown SWA so I can't comment on their service, but when I was in Panama City I was super excited when SWA started service from there until I tried buying tickets and they were consistently over $100 more to get to EWR than DAL was. But those DAL flights sucked, CRJ to ATL and MD88 to EWR.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
I prefer a sustainable business model that doesn't treat its customers like trash just because you can get away with it.
Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
Ok, I was being a little hyperbolic, but circa 2009 when even if you found a regional that was hiring you might make $25k first year, living in a crashpad on reserve because you couldn’t afford to live in base, or you could go work for a scummy corporate operation that would hire you as a pilot/office drone which meant you were 24/7 on call and were much more office drone than pilot, or flight instruct for all eternity, or fly survey and be away from home all the time flying a 172, and the majors had guys on furlough, a FedEx van gig seemed pretty good. Predictable schedule, livable pay (especially since they tended to base in low COL locations), and at the time they were retrofitting the Vans with Garmin glass and TKS so you might not die in ice. Bonus, if you worked for the right feeder you might have a chance of one of the ATR lifers medicalling out and get a shot at some multi turbine time.
Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
I really want some JC members you don’t know to rent from and/or work for you so we can get a secret shopper report and know if this is all talk or if your money is where your mouth is.
nibake
Powder hound
All this talk is very interesting to me because this is a serious question I have.
Home every day, gratuitous amounts of PTO, about 20 hours per week of duty time (8-9 flight), and >100k is not a bad gig for your average Joe.
Home every day, gratuitous amounts of PTO, about 20 hours per week of duty time (8-9 flight), and >100k is not a bad gig for your average Joe.
Home every day? I didn't think that was an option flying for Delta and co.? If not, I'm going to continue to argue that there are feeder schedules better than what even the most senior pilots hold.
Ecl!pse
Well-Known Member
Also, to come back to the fare discussion, using actual publicly filed data vs. anecdote:
As of the latest public data, year ending 2Q 2017, Delta and Southwest overlapped in 117 markets. Of those 117 markets, Delta had higher fares in 115 of them, at an average fare 61% higher than Southwest. Some of this can be explained by Delta's premium cabin, differences in aircraft gauge, but I don't know if those two are going to fully make up the gap. Even in markets where seating capacity was within 5% of each other (13 of those 117 markets), Delta fares are still 51% higher than Southwest. Again, first class helps explain some of this, but it's tough to say whether it's all of it.
That's fine as your opinion, and I won't fight your take on it - they don't offer what you perceive as value. I would consider their product more than acceptable/fine, and industry NPS data seems to suggest that customers actually prefer Southwest over other US carriers. Southwest continually ranks at the top of the airline NPS rankings, so between that and their profitability, I find it hard to believe the public-at-large considers the product crap.
As of the latest public data, year ending 2Q 2017, Delta and Southwest overlapped in 117 markets. Of those 117 markets, Delta had higher fares in 115 of them, at an average fare 61% higher than Southwest. Some of this can be explained by Delta's premium cabin, differences in aircraft gauge, but I don't know if those two are going to fully make up the gap. Even in markets where seating capacity was within 5% of each other (13 of those 117 markets), Delta fares are still 51% higher than Southwest. Again, first class helps explain some of this, but it's tough to say whether it's all of it.
That's fine as your opinion, and I won't fight your take on it - they don't offer what you perceive as value. I would consider their product more than acceptable/fine, and industry NPS data seems to suggest that customers actually prefer Southwest over other US carriers. Southwest continually ranks at the top of the airline NPS rankings, so between that and their profitability, I find it hard to believe the public-at-large considers the product crap.
NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
Communist.
nibake
Powder hound
Interestingly, treating people well doesn't necessarily cost the company money!
z987k
Well-Known Member
So I flew for a UPS feeder, but we had the same schedule as the FedEx guys on the same route, sometimes to within a minute. Home every day is quite the misnomer for the vast majority of the routes. It's the sunshine thought you put in your head to deal with the crap sandwich you're actually eating. There's a handful of ways it might work.
A - you live in the hub and the route flies to an outstation starting Monday night and your last shift is coming home Saturday morning. The 10 hours required rest is usually at that outstation. Somthing like 6am from Hub A to BFE by 8am. 6pm from BFE to Hub A by 8pm. Look! You're home for enough time to eat and sleep. Maybe just sleep.
B - you live in the outstation and the route is more or less the same, but now you sleep at the hub and never in your own bed, or since there's not actually enough time at the hub to get meaningful sleep, you sleep a good bit during the day after you get home. Oh and you're only home when no one else is. Your kids/gf/wife are at school/job/etc. Then you leave to go to work the second they get home.
C - There's a couple routes at a couple bases that due to the distance from MEM/SDF the window to send an overnight package is so short that you actually do something similar to a 9-5. They are by far not the norm. I think it's just a couple on the west coast and AK.
No one is making 100k except some longer term guys in the ATR. Van pay is still in the 50s.
Unless you end up with C, the schedule is brutal on your sleep and don't expect to have friends. There's a reason OOTSK exists.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Never lost an employee, so I think that speaks for itself. As for tenants, I suspect you'd find quite a few who hate our guts.
Remember, our clients are the landlords, not the tenants. It's our job to be the bad guy on the landlord's behalf. Nobody likes you when you evict them or withhold their deposit for repairs. I think a lot of this comes down to expectations. A lot of Southwest's customers only fly Southwest. Because Southwest's marketing has been so incredibly effective at convincing the consume that they're the cheapest fare (even though they're frequently not), many lower and middle class flyers have never even thought of buying a ticket on one of the legacy carriers. And because their only experience is Southwest, they have nothing to compare it to. Having a bag of peanuts thrown at you by a camp counselor might not seem to bad if you've never had decent service.