Craig Meyer
Philip Greenspun's Homepage : Community member
A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since November 3, 2010
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- November 3, 2010, on Unions and Airlines:
Very neat article as always, Phil. Thank you again.
Tell me how well I'm doing here:
This appears to explain very well how Southwest and Alaska airlines have grown so well: If you can just keep growing, and never once falter, then it's a positive-feedback cycle. As long as you never contract, you can keep growing cheaper than the competition by hiring new people, thus "liquidating" their seniority at their previous employers.
This is wild! If I were to go into the cement-mixing business, for example, and crowd out the incumbent competitor, that would be wasteful. They already have the experienced people, the trucks and equipment that are mostly paid off, etc. So it would be more profitable to just invest in that company but otherwise leave it alone.
But not with the airlines. When Airline A out-prices and takes a piece of business from Airline B, they wind up with LOWER costs than Airline B had. It's all about finding ways to churn the people from one airline to anoth...
- November 3, 2010, on Unions and Airlines:
It also breaks my heart to think of how the senior and junior pilots, helping to fly the same plane, have to do so in spite of their having, essentially, and adversarial relationship.
The senior pilot is a parasite on the junior, they both know it, they swallow that and do their jobs, and that sucks. I also trust their partnership with my life when I fly.
What this also suggests, to me, is that flying a jetliner actually isn't that hard. Driving a taxi in Manhattan sounds more challenging. I mean, it apparently costs basically NOTHING ($19,000/year) to pay someone to just FLY A JETLINER. That's free. They make the REAL money by running a (legally-protected) protection racket, gate-keeping between the airlines and their ability to do business. They could do THAT from home; flying the airplane is just a formality.
philg@mit.edu