Blame Cost-Cutting
Ah, to be young and an aspiring
commercial pilot. The exotic destinations, the fabulous
friendships, the wealth and the girls (or guys, as the case may
be). But these days, that vision of an airline pilot's life is
changing -- getting a little less bright and a little more like
work. Face it: Commercial flying is losing its luster.
The hours are longer. The vacations are fewer and farther
between. Wages are shrinking faster than a cotton shirt in a hot
water wash and even the perks are starting to disappear.
"In this industry there was always the promise that at the end
of the hard road to becoming an airline pilot you'd have a great
schedule and make good money," JetBlue pilot Brian Humphreys told
the Denver Rocky Mountain News. "But that's not necessarily true
anymore. From one month to the next, there's always something new
creeping up in this industry. It's still a good job, but it's
certainly not what it used to be."
You'll probably get some argument here, but the biggest of the
changes began around the time the industry seriously slumped, right
after 9/11. Since then, the industry has lost about 136,000 jobs --
almost a third of the workforce. For those who weren't laid off,
the news is only barely better. Wages have tumbled, on the flight
deck, in the cabin and on the ground.
"Airlines have cut back on
everything imaginable, from wages and pensions to less obvious
things like sponsorship of employee clubs and donations of
tickets," said Henry Harteveldt, a vice president at Forrester
Research in San Francisco, in an interview with the Rocky Mountain
News. "Workers have suffered so much in terms of wage givebacks,
longer hours, being away from home more often, less time between
meals, more aggressive production rules and lower wages."
As Harry Stonecipher, the former Boeing president
and CEO ousted after a sex scandal involving one of his own
employees, said earlier this month, labor is right at the top of
the list of airline expenses. "It's not fuel,"
Stonecipher said, referring to the macro-jumps in fuel prices over
the last 18 months. "Everybody says, 'oh, it's oil causing all
this.' Well, oil doesn't cause that.... If you're in the plastics
molding business, [the rising cost of] oil probably affects you
more than it does the airlines.
"Right now," Stonecipher said, "if you look at the majors in
this country... Delta, United, Northwest, American, US Air... you
have a cost up here that 47-percent of is labor cost."
Perhaps not eloquent, but certainly to the point.
Where does that leave the folks on the flightline and behind the
ticket counter? They're making less money, doing more work and
taking less time off. And in some cases, the job is actually a bit
more dangerous.
"It's totally a different job now,"
said Sara Nelson Dela Cruz, a spokeswoman for the Association of
Flight Attendants -- also interviewed by the Rocky Mountain News.
"Now we're the last line of defense on an airplane before the
cockpit. To come to work and carry that on your shoulders is
huge."
So where's the silver lining? Well, passenger loads are up.
Low-cost carriers are, for the most part, able to shelter their
workers from the industry contraction going on around them.
Companies like Southwest and JetBlue are actually profiting -- and
have been all along.
"I don't have to worry right now," Natalie Ordakowski, a
Denver-based flight attendant who's been with Frontier for more
than 10 years and previously worked for Continental, in an
interview with the Rocky Mountain News. "We've never had pay cuts,
we still get the company 401(k) match, we still get yearly pay
increases. I feel bad for other people who are losing everything
they have."
Some speculate that the incredible shrinking airline industry is
a good thing for the companies that can survive. Consider: With
lower pay, longer hours and harder work, the people who come into
the industry from this point forward had better love aviation.
"This is an industry that historically has had a fair amount of
junkies working in it, doing what they love to do," said George
Hamlin, a director at Merge Global. He told the News, "That's not
going away unless conditions change much more drastically."