
How We Ruined Airline Jobs - smacktoward
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/09/how_we_ruined_airline_jobs.html
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roenxi
Is there anything here to be debated? The article quotes starting salaries
that appear to be lower than for a bus driver (1) which to my view is a
similar job; albeit probably with lower training requirements.

It doesn't seem surprising that there is a pilot shortage. Possibly employers
need to pay more and train more pilots.

[1] [https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/bus-
driver/salary](https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/bus-driver/salary)

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murderfs
The contracts that pilots unions have negotiated with their airlines are
pretty fucked up. Newbies (after several years of education, and a few more
years of doing flight instruction to get enough hours) are basically stuck
working as a first officer (i.e. copilot) for either UPS/FedEx or a regional
airline, with salaries around $30,000/year. Your career progression depends on
being promoted to captain, which is entirely based on seniority. If you're
lucky enough to have enough spots open up via retirement or expansion, you
then have a hope of being accepted by a major/legacy airline, and make
$50-70k/year, scaling up to 150-300k, depending on the airline. Once you join,
due to the seniority-based payscale/captain waitlist, you're pretty much
locked in, except for maybe a one time upgrade from a major airline to a
legacy one.

Example payscales:

Envoy Air, a regional airline that's a feeder for American Airlines:
[http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/regional/envoy_a...](http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/regional/envoy_air)

JetBlue, a major airline: [http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/major-
national-l...](http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/major-national-
lcc/jetblue_airways)

American Airlines, a legacy airline:
[http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/legacy/american_...](http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/legacy/american_airlines)

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siberianbear
I used to fly a lot when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Air travel was
always awful. I usually flew with and especially hated United Airlines,
because the service was _so_ spectacularly awful.

Then, I moved to Russia. Now, I fly on Aeroflot, S7 and Ural Airlines a lot.
It's _always_ awful. _Really_ awful. It makes me pine for the good 'ol days
when I had to fly on United. The incompetence, apathy and downright idiocy of
these people who work for the Russian airline comes never ceases to shock me.

I'm so happy now when I come back to the United States and fly United.
Finally, I get to fly on an airline with staff who are comparatively friendly,
helpful and competent.

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valleyer
Can you give a concrete example of your bad experience with Russian airlines?
I'd like to share in your newfound perspective on U.S. airlines.

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guicho271828
My friend flew to London from Japan with Aeroflot. It was a connection flight
and he had 4 flights in total (round trip included), and 3 of 4 flights were
delayed for 3+ hours each.

I also experienced a 5 hour delay. The worst thing was not the length of the
delay, but how they handled it... they gave us nearly zero information and
most passengers were frustrated by the "expected departure time" on the screen
constantly being updated with no explanation.

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kleiba
The same thing happened to me in Calgary last year: what we were told after 6
hours of "boarding will start in approximately 15 minutes" was that there was
a security breach at the airport where someone had accidentally left a door
open, which required them to go through a long procedure of re-securing the
affected areas and the aircraft. If that is true, however, they could have
told everyone at the gate right from the start: look, we're really sorry, we
screwed up and this is going to take a while. A long while. So why don't you
make yourselves comfortable, go get some lunch or drinks and be back in six
hours?

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shalmanese
While the carriers are responsible for a lot of shit, the people most
responsible for making the job of piloting suck is pilots. The contracts
negotiated by pilot unions are the ultimate expression of "fuck you, I got
mine".

Not only is pay determined seniority, so is getting first pick of flights and
a bunch of other quality of life factors that make junior piloting a living
hell.

Airlines would love to pay their junior pilots more as they correctly realize
the economic damage of a shriveling pipeline but they can't do it without
senior pilots demanding their vig.

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scarface74
I can't find a villian in this story. Airlines aren't hugely profitable
according to the story especially regional airlines. If they raise their
prices on regional flights, people will just drive or take a shuttle service
to the nearest hub.

It seems like the hub system is the most efficient. But then again, that's
easy for me to say since I don't live far away from a major hub where I've
been able to get direct flights to any major city in t in the country.

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skookumchuck
The article seems confused. It talks about "soaring", "huge" profits, while
also talking about "unprecedented" losses, "struggling" through bankruptcies,
and the "perennially insolvent airline industry".

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ck425
The airline industry is on the whole a zero sum industry, but there's a huge
difference in profits/losses between the many airlines worldwide. So some do
make huge profits while most struggle constantly.

