ByTheBay said:
DCFlyer, thanks for the reply. I appreciate the timme you put into it. I don't know if you have this information or a comparison but how do the nubers (employee per revenue seat) comare to ASM. I know LUV manages to fly its aircraft 13 hours aday and B6 even more. I'm guessing that skews the employee per ASM in LUV's favor because they are moving the seats more hours/flts per day. What is the magic in their contracts that allow for that kind of productivity and don't at US Airways. What's the secret?
At LUV don't F/A's clean planes in between flightd and Pilots figure their own W/B with calculators I believe they contract out things like major maintence and cleaning of planes over night. I think they utilize part time employees more and employees can perform multiple jobs like ramp/gate/push planes back. Would these changes be acceptable to US Airways employees. I know a lot of posters seem to hold this management up to LUV's and their standard of profitability. Is it possible to just adopt their pay and work rules? Would US Airways employyes even go for that?
By the bay,
Unless I'm mistaken, ASM is controlled entirely by management. The A in ASM is available, and management can increase availability thereby spreading out the fixed costs within the system and bringing in more income. Just as there is nothing stopping management from rolling PHL, there is nothing stopping them from increasing air time. The only thing stopping them from reducing staging lenghts is that we have a hub and spoke system (and an inefficient one at that). When you have 90 flights coming into a facility one hour, relatively few coming in and going out the second hour, and 90 going back out the third hour, there are built-in inefficiencies. Instead of having, for example, 25 gates, you have to lease 90. Your customers have to walk from the end of one concourse to the end of another to catch their connecting flights. You have fuel burn in the air and fuel burn on the tarmac because the employees that were doing nothing an hour ago are now having to work so many flights and runways are overtaxed. Of course there are union workrule issues, and many silly ones, I will give you that. But there is no doubt in my mind that we need to be getting an average of 13-14 revenue hours a day out of each and every one of our aircraft, and it is management's responsibility to figure out how to do that. Having the relavely short average flight we currently have is wrought with problems. Again, it is management's responsibility to fix these things and they have either ( a ) failed to address them or ( b ) failed to convey to employees how they intend to fix them.
I am reminded of a time when I was a teenager when my parents purchased a piece of commercial property out of foreclosure. It was a restaurant on a busy intersection at the entrance to an business park. The prior owner was unable to make a go of things and unfortunately lost the property. My parents had no restaurant management experience, but the value of the land and improvements was high and the deal they got was good. What did they do? They figured out how to get the maximum benefit from the property. (My college business classes called this "highest and best use"). First, they hired someone experienced in restaurant management to reopen the restaurant. Instead of just serving dinner, as the prior owner had done, they opened for lunch as well and came up with an menu the chef could quickly and cheaply prepare which drew folks from the adjacent business park in droves. Many costs were fixed... the mortgage, insurance, taxes. They couldn't change these things. But by opening for lunch and promoting a "budget" menu to local workers, the money they made was "gravy." After that happened, they came up with a happy hour promotion... inexpensive drinks and appetizers. You know what? More "gravy". Then they came up with another menu for a couple of the typical slower restaurant nights to get more people in. After a couple of years of very good business, they sold the restaurant business (but not the land and building) at a very good profit, assuring a very nice lease rate for several more years because they had figured out how to make the numbers work very well using the factors they could not change. Then, a couple of years later they sold the real estate, again at a very good price because the high lease rate brought up the value of the land. THAT'S MANAGEMENT! THAT'S HOW YOU DO THINGS. YOU TAKE LEMONS AND MAKE LEMONADE. YOU DON'T BLAME OTHER PEOPLE FOR JUST TRYING TO MAKE A LIVING. YOU DON'T BLAME YOUR EMPLOYEES FOR YOUR MISTAKES... YOU MAKE YOUR EMPLOYEES YOUR PARTNERS. THAT IS SOMETHING THIS MANAGEMENT HAS FAILED MISERABLY TO DO.
If U added an extra couple of hours of flying time to each aircraft, it would be "gravy". We already have our aircraft lease payments to make and our gate space to pay for. Adding flights and flying hours would add revenue, but much of the cost of doing so would already be fixed into the current debt load. Adding longer flights would reduce the debt load by allowing us to get rid of expensive gates and landing fees and decrease fuel burn associated with takeoffs, landings, and idling.
Here's an example of how Management can change things at U. We hold, I believe, five gates at SFO. (I know this will change when we move to the other terminal, but it's an example). From those five gates, we operate nine flights a day, all to our hub cities. So in most instances, the average passenger will connect to another city thereby invalidating any revenue potential from the hub city and making the hub operation a cost center rather than a profit center. Now let's say U did something they seem to have not done in a long time... thought things through. They could give up two or three gates at that station and figure out where else people WANT to fly directly... for example BOS (a U focus city). They could probably come close to filling a 321 or 757 with business fares, get folks into our focus city, and feed some of them into SJ's from there. Now imagine they did the same thing from SFO to MIA, or to SJU, or to EWR. And imagine they had simalar sations in LAX and SAN and PDX, running flight to our hubs and to other popluar cities. Just one example but hardly rocket science.
As for your questions on multi-tasking at LUV. Yes, LUV F/A's do clean planes, but that's a topic for an entirely different string. Long story short, they don't serve food. Would you go into a restaurant and order a meal when if you knew the server had just cleaned the bathroom? Aside from that, flight attendants are not paid for that time. There are FAA regulated duties which flight attendants must perform during non-paid time, but non-regulated duties should be paid. I can't speak for the other work groups regarding their work rules, but it is my understanding that LUV rampers do multiple duties.
I believe it is managememt's intention to add the 60 A/C because they realize they made a huge mistake cutting as much as they did. They are just trying to maximize the benefit by holding it over Labor's head and rewrighting work rules.
Bay, I don't think many folks here really object to redefining job descriptions and multi-tasking. But we want it without further job losses and with a creditble, intelligent plan to guide us prosperously into the future. U employees are tired of paying for the mistakes of past mismansgement. We want a plan that involves new, innovative sources of revenue. We want a plan that involves beating the LCC's at their own game. If we could see these things from management, it would be a good thing and I think employees would be receptive to making changes if they involved growing the airline and becoming profitable. Current management has had plenty of time to address these issues and have failed to legitimately do so.
h34r:
