These knucklehead CEOs have no intention of paying Southwest wages. They intend to pay a lot less. In addtion they are going to gut scope and farm out jobs at will whenever their lapdog unions won't roll over. Make no doubt about it, the industry sees this as their big chance to kill labor once and for all . . . and they might just succeed with the Republicans in power.
Southwest people make good money. I think their mechanics make more than AMR's do now.
Southwest wages are going to be the industry leading, but you can be sure that SWA is going to lean on their people too.
Even now the FAA's oversight of the aviation industry and maintenance in particular is seriously in question. With mechanics having relatively portable skills and able to make much better money in something other than aviation, I expect the best ones to bail-out, and the ones that are left will be demoralized and driven even harder by management. That is not a good combination.
Further, even if demand picks up, I think the airlines will be loath spend the huge capital on expansion, having been burnt so badly the last couple of years. You can bet on prices going WAY up, airplanes crammed with seats, less frequency, and pissed-off workers.
As far as safety goes, crew rest periods, duty day length, etc are going to get even more onerous. Right now the FAA mandates domestic reserve pilots have defined rest periods, however, international pilots are on-call 24 hours a day to fly up to 12 hour flights that might begin after a pilot has been up all day. Guess what? The airlines don't give a s**t because the inane FAA doesn't address rest periods for international reserve pilots. Keep that in mind that when you're flying over the Atlantic in the middle of the night, that one of your pilot's may have been awake for 18 hours already. . . and the flight's not even half over.
RV4, you obviously don't know much about the ability of the airline industry or it's ability to react quickly to changes in demand. Two years ago, AMR couldn't hire enough pilots. The school house was going at FULL capacity and new airplanes were being delivered, and that wasn't enough. We're not selling gumballs and airplanes and crews don't come out of 25 cent machines . . . well, not yet anyway.
I understand your republican agenda . . . screw labor. Did you buddies at Enron and Worldcom tutor you?
BTW, I'm not a liberal either. I dislike most democrat politicians as much as weasle-talking republicans. That's why I resigned from the republican party.
25 AM Winglet wrote: 
