Should we pay Commuter Airline Pilots more than $8 an hour?

[lib2DaBone]

Airline Pilots rack up more than $100,000 in training fees that they hope to recover when they are hired by a major airline.

They bust there ass and work non-swtop without a break.

The young pilots.. work for almost nothing ...on the Commuter Airlines.. in hopes of gaining experieince and ultimately a shot at the big time.

But what if the Commuter Airlines continue to cut corners just to save a dime? They cut safety, convenience and pilot training. Do they pass this savings on to the customer? Does anyone care?

Hell no. The wall Street guys get the profits while Americans die. Greed is job #1 in America....

[Hoopla Phil]

1. If you pay $8 an hour for pilots then you will get $8 an hour pilots.

I don't want that myself.

[tabbycat31]

2. they're worth more than an investment banker

let alone a Burger King employee. It's insane. Skilled employees should be paid for their skills.

[DBoon]

3. How much should an airline pilot make?

When you lose an engine at 35,000 feet, you start emptying your bank account

[rcrush]

4. I think we should pay everyone more than $8 an hour.

Thats a shitty wage even for a McDonalds employee. In fact I think McDonalds pays their employees more than that.

[varelse]

5. $8 an hour?

I'd rather walk all the way than get on that plane. :scared:

[havocmom]

10. Even pedestrians could be at risk from $8 an hour pilots

There aren't umbrellas tough enough to save our asses.

[cloudbase]

6. They don't work fifty

forty hour weeks per year, so I'm not certain the $8/hour figure is real.

Besides, if the plane isn't safe, it's up to them to refuse to fly.

[DemoTex]

7. The regional and commuter airlines used to fly 19-30 seat Beech and Saab aircraft.

Now some are flying 70-100 seat "regional jets" .. RJs. The 70-100 seat class used to be well-paid mainline jobs on Fokker-28s, Fokker-100s, DC-9s, and Boeing 737-200s. I predicted this in a magazine article in the early 1990s. It was all a well-planned (and successful) effort by the robber barons in the airline industry to bust the pilots' unions (like ALPA) in general, and the mainline airline pilots' contractual "scope clauses" (work protection) in particular.

When did this union busting start? Under Ronny Raygunz, of course. The PATCO fiasco (Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers) emboldened robber barons like Frank Lorenzo. Lorenzo fired the striking ALPA pilots at Continental in 1982 and replaced them with scabs. Then Lorenzo went on on a rampage with Eastern, People's, and NY Air. This was the non-subtle union busting.

The subtle union busting, the regional and commuter airline invasion, began under Bu$h-1 after EAL folded and Lorenzo was banned from the airline industry. This was a period, the 80s-90s, that saw Elizabeth Dole serve as both Secretary of Labor and Secretary of Transportation. Anyone else here see the ironies in that?

Had we airline pilots stood up to the bastards in the early 1990s with the oft discussed, but never implemented S.O.S. (suspension of service .. or French-style general strike, the Railway Labor Act be damned), things would have turned out a whole lot better.

[SheilaT]

9. In a similar manner, when airline deregulation

was proposed back in the 70s, those of us who were airline ticket agents, said that this would lead both to the demise of service to the smaller airports, and a lessening of the quality of employees. Eventually a number of airlines went to a two-tier system of pay, with new hires being paid much less than those already on the job. Look at what's happened. Not only are there a lot of cities that no longer have any air service at all, but the replacement of real humans with the kiosks means that whenever flights are not operating completely smoothly and on time, there are simply not enough agents at the airport to deal with the passengers.

Several years ago at Christmas time, when flights were being very backed up mainly because of weather, the news media reported that one particular airline at one particular airport had experienced a large number of employees who'd called in sick. Because that was the airline I used to work for, I called some former co-workers to ask about this. And they all said, no, this was a direct result of substituting machinery for humans.

While we could discuss just how high a salary is too much for a pilot, $8.00 is far too low. And never forget the amazing Captain Sullenberger who did that amazing job of landing his jet in the Hudson River back in January. While that is one for the record books, what hardly anyone outside the airline industry realizes is that practically on a daily basis some sort of in-air crisis occurs, or some kind of dicey landing takes place, and it never hits the news, but disaster is averted by the incredible skills and dedication of the flight crews.

[IDFbunny]

8. Cummuter pilots actually PILOT their planes.

Modern airliners are really robotic and can take-off, cruise, and land without human intervention. The cockpit if the future is that the pilot just watches the computer and a pitbull to bite the pilot in case he wants to touch something.

[Hoopla Phil]

11. Or if something fails. Remember the plain landing in that river not so long ago?

You could write a program for it but probably not fast enough for a human to take the controls and DO it. . . at least not yet.