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Why we’ve canceled flights, and what we are doing to get back on track
- Marazan 4y agoLiking the passive voice which manages to mention Omicron and illness in the same sentence without actually saying the staff were sick with Covid.
- nukemaster 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660ZCEhvbnw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660ZCEhvbnw
- flacnut 4y ago> Trainings were canceled and delayed due to student or trainer illness This seems to specifically imply that illness in training pilots and pilot trainers is the cause. I would expect a more passive version to be "Trainings were canceled and delayed due to the Omicron surge..." which doesn't specify if anyone got sick.
- rjmill 4y agoHow would that look in active voice? "Our trainers and students caught covid, so we had to cancel their classes"? Active voice there feels like they're shifting the blame to their employees, which is never a good look for an employer. I think they did the right thing by keeping it focused on their lack of planning/foresight.
- hindsightbias 4y agoWhen your basic right seater needs a minimum of 1500 hours flight time, maybe your career path should include a salary higher than a union bus driver.
- faangiq 4y agoYou will earn nothing. And you will be happy.
- bumper_crop 4y agoAirlines in America are traditionally extremely capital intensive, and the customers are very price sensitive. (e.g. "If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.") The low salary and unfavorable hours pilots face really originate at the customer level, with most people being unwilling to pay higher ticket prices. It's easy to blame airlines here, but that's a mental shortcut that doesn't represent the truth.
- bumblebritches5 4y ago
- tmp_anon_22 4y agoWould Airlines be so capital intensive if not for the security theatre of the TSA and all its related expenses?
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoYes. TSA security theater is all paid for with a specific line item on your ticket. It is not that expensive: > The fee is currently $5.60 per one-way trip in air transportation that originates at an airport in the U.S., except that the fee imposed per round trip shall not exceed $11.20 The rest is covered by tax payers, not airliners specifically. https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/testimony/2020/03/03/examining-presidents-fy-2021-budget-request-transportation-security https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/testimony/2020/03/03/examinin...
- ceeplusplus 4y agoYes. During COVID multiple airlines either almost went bankrupt or suffered huge losses because most of the cost of flying is depreciation of the airplanes themselves. That's why even though the US govt paid for airline employees' wages and fuel costs were 0 because no one was flying during COVID, airlines still suffered big losses.
- iooi 4y agoPilots at the majors earn 200k-500k. There's evidence of some pilots hitting seven figures. How much does a bus driver make?
- ericbarrett 4y agoPilots not flying major routes for major airlines make less, in some cases a lot less ($30-40k a year).
- jabedude 4y agoHow is this information relevant on a discussion about a pilot shortage affecting a major carrier?
- dsr_ 4y agoIn the same way that you don't get to be a principal engineer at Google on your first day out of college, you don't get to be a captain on your first day out of flight school. But the pay and working conditions for new pilots is rather worse than it is for new programmers.
- qbasic_forever 4y agoYeah, people should think of this like "what if Google engineers started at $45k salaries instead of $120k+?" They could work for years to get up to that same $300k+ level but they're starting much lower and expected to just take it (and the ultra high mountain view/SF cost of living).
- tzs 4y agoThat’s half of it. To get the full pilot experience add “and what if when senior Google engineers left for Apple or Microsoft or Facebook they had to start as junior engineers again at junior pay and could only be promoted back up after the junior engineers already there were promoted?”
- 4y ago
- totalview 4y agoYeah, they make way more than any bus driver. “An Alaska Airlines captain, according to a news release from the airline, averages about $341,000 a year, but pilots say it’s not just about money“ https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2022/04/04/cancellations-continue-anchorages-largest-airport-due-alaska-airlines-pilot-shortage/ https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2022/04/04/cancellations-c... FWIW I just traveled on 4 flights with Alaska Air and this didn’t impact us at all.
- sparrish 4y agoRight seat != left seat. Check salary of first officers.
- Beltalowda 4y agoAccording to Glassdoor it's a little over $100k. [1] I don't know what union bus drivers earn, but probably less than that? Median income is about $44k. It seems like a decent salary. [1]: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Alaska-Airlines-First-Officer-Salaries-E19_D_KO16,29.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Alaska-Airlines-First-Offic...
- lotsofpulp 4y agoWhat is the difference in probability of achieving that pay? And difference in opportunity cost (debt, time, and effort)? Without this information, an explicit comparison is impossible.
- ledauphin 4y agoit's not, because you're looking at major carriers, which no one with the minimum 1500 hours will get a job at.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoA Metro (Seattle) bus driver can easily earn $100k, but the range is crazily from $15k to $130K/year, assuming the upper end is someone in it for awhile working full time, and the lower end is very part time.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago> 10,000 pilots left the airline industry Hmm. I wonder. Why. That was. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
- bpodgursky 4y agoThat which cannot be questioned, isn't.
- reedjosh 4y ago
- evan_ 4y agowow I had no idea society was ruled over by children with leukemia. Learn something new every day.
- reedjosh 4y agoChildren with Leukemia are mega whiny.
- 1123581321 4y agoThis is inadvertently insightful since we are indeed not allowed to substantially criticize and reduce the power of the medical industry, as innocent lives are at stake if costs are moderated. Understandably, no one wants to reckon with the potential consequence of losing innocents that might’ve benefitted from an additional treatment.
- p0wn 4y agoFlying sucks. Flights are always packed and the seats are too close together for comfort. I wonder if a plane was packed with all first class seats how expensive the tickets would be.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> I wonder if a plane was packed with all first class seats how expensive the tickets would be. It's pretty normal to have all lie-flat business/first-class flights between major business centres such as New York and London. You wouldn't know about them unless you were booking a first-class ticket in the first place, so they're not very visible. I think the prices are the same as normal? Otherwise nobody would use them, of course.
- andrejguran 4y agothey're not if you're willing to pay extra for comfort
- atdrummond 4y agoI used to fly a route from London City to JFK (with a stopover in Shannon) and a similar route from Newark to Singapore. Both were competitively priced with the business class seats on the 3 class birds on similar routes. In the case of the former, it was much slower than the larger jets, so I assume that put downward pressure on the flight price. For the Newark flight, I think the departing airport being Newark also helped contribute to slightly lower fares than say if it was JFK to SIN. Having worked in the industry previously, I’m not sure there are many city pairs where all business works but carriers such as La Compagnie have made it work for at least stretches at a time.
- rootusrootus 4y agoDouble, more or less, if the sole requirement was to have the same revenue per flight for a full plane. E.g. a small short haul aircraft with, say, 35 rows of economy class (six across) would end up with 30 rows of first class (four across). That cuts capacity by about half. But some people will pay more for comfort. And most regular people are incredibly price sensitive, they'll suffer quite a lot just to save even 10 bucks on an airline ticket, so your hypothetical airline doing this strategy went bankrupt.
- m1gu3l 4y agoNot alaska air but: Currently stuck from a flight canceled on Saturday, next available flight out is Thursday night. I’ve gone through every state of rage and have settled on just never flying again when i get home.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoI love this. It feels like only in America (perhaps Canada, Aus/NZ, and parts of Northern/Western Europe?) would a company cop in direct terms to screwing up and needing to do better. There's little (but not zero) PR-speak here and little (but not zero) passive voice or blame on uncontrollable circumstances: it's a decent enough post-mortem. In most countries, especially in East Asia or central/Eastern Europe, I never see companies say in public "we messed up and here's how". It's always caused by acts of god, unforeseeable industry conditions, etc. It's never mea culpa. But speaking of Canada, it'll be a cold day in hell before Air Canada ever admits to being the worst major airline in the developed world.
- talal7860 4y ago> But speaking of Canada, it'll be a cold day in hell before Air Canada ever admits to being the worst major airline in the developed world. I wouldn't agree more.
- ChrisArchitect 4y agoI wouldn't? You mean, couldn't?
- ibejoeb 4y agoThe "How we got here" section blames pilots leaving (or being forced out,) covid illness, and storms. Then it goes on to cite a "picketing" event--that, hand to god, didn't cause any cancellations--while everyone knows it was a walkout. Now, mind you, Alaska supports BIPOC pilots. Can't leave an opportunity to signal that hard on the table. And, finally, Alaska has the best pilot remuneration. So good that the union and the company have been deadlocked for 3 years. They simply can't resist the urge to write up this bunk. Nobody appreciates it. But everyone does it anyway. This could have been one paragraph that says there was poor management that led to a compounding effect. We don't have enough pilots. We should have adjusted the routes, but we just let it.
- rootsudo 4y agoCorrect, especially if you're in any Aviation related group or friends - you know exactly what is going on. Alaskaair generally does not want to pay competitive rates. This is corporate whitewashing at the worst, and I am glad that the pilots have enough collective bargaining power to demand AlaskaAir to meet their demands. I hate to suggest go on facebook, but facebook groups of pilots and general PNW aviation have tons of discussion about this, with many pilots themselves voicing comments about their opinion and experience w/ Alaskair.
- kepler1 4y ago
- rootusrootus 4y agoGiven that it was in a paragraph where they describe what exactly they are doing to increase pilot supply, it does not seem out of place.
- amatecha 4y agoI mean, maybe because those people face discrimination and bigotry basically everywhere they go and having a program to specifically support them will help bring in more new staff, particularly during a time when staffing is difficult? It says it at the beginning of the sentence: "To bring new pilots into our ranks" Further, it's not "political" to make people feel welcome at your organization. It's just being a good person.
- daenz 4y agoWhy did they leave out a program for trans pilots? Why aren't they being made to feel welcome too?
- renewiltord 4y agoWhat a waste of time to talk like this
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mrguyorama 4y agoJust because you don't EXPLICITLY include everyone, doesn't mean you aren't inclusive. It's the same as "Black lives matter" doesn't mean "ONLY black lives matter"
- deleted 4y ago
- cr555 4y agolazy mountain?
- throwntoday 4y agoI love AlaskaAir although I'm a bit bias given it's the only way to get there. Never had a bad experience flying with them, at least to Alaska. Don't know how their legs in the lower 48 match up.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoAlaskaAir is based in Seattle and makes most of their money flying routes on the west coast (e.g. California).
- hysan 4y agoSo this explains why my flight got cancelled and then they put me on an earlier flight… twice! I had to reschedule because it went from a 9am to a 7am flight. Quite the difference. I will have to check, but I don’t believe that I got a unique phone number in any of those emails.
- pdx_flyer 4y agoAlaska isn't the only one facing a pilot shortage and an increase in schedules. JetBlue, Southwest, and all of the regional carriers are all underwater when it comes to having a pilot deficit when compared to their schedules. Delta, American, and United are less affected but will still feel it a bit, especially in their regional operations. It's going to be a looooonng summer.