Air Canada vs American Airlines A320

[pianokeys]

Justin Trudeau touched some woman’s cans at a music festival in B.C. eighteen years ago, it made the news. He ain’t innocent. May not be a pussy grabber but he’s not immune to the siren call of a lady.

Back on topic of AC 320s AA 320s, ours were purchased thanks to Brian Mulroney getting a kickback.

[av8ts]

TRUMP. One of the only politician in the Western World who tries so hard and has succeed in many fronts to do EXACTLY what he has PROMISED to do in his campaign. He is a man of his WORD. He has HONOR in that way

I was hoping someone else was going to do this but I guess it’s left to me.
Remember the EXACTLY in caps was yours

Promise:balance the federal budget-its growing not shrinking
Promise:I would not be a President who took vacations-golf golf golf
Promise:cancel funding to sanctuary cities -court puts an end to that promise
Promise: he’d cut taxes and the rich would pay more-53% of Americans will pay more but he told his wealthy friends at Mar-A-Lago “you all just got a lot richer”
Promise:to end North Korea’s nuclear program-didn’t happen. He doesn’t even talk about it anymore
Promise:repeal and replace Obamacare with insurance for everyone-did not repeal or replace, however did cut funding so 4 million less Americans have health care
Promise:invest one trillion in crumbling infrastructure- after tax cuts for the rich there’s no money for this
Promise:bring down drug prices-didn’t happen
Promise:label China a “currency manipulator”- nope
Promise:won’t bomb Syria-boom
Promise:revive the struggling coal industry (because everyone want a job in a coal mine)-didn’t happen
Promise:release his taxes-lies
Promise: I WILL BUILD A WALL AND MEXICO WILL PAY FOR IT- HA HA HA still waiting for this to happen

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. If you want to edit your EXACTLY to undercase we would understand

[C.W.E.]

Promise:release his taxes-lies

He promised to release tax-lies?

You mean he lied on his tax forms and promised to release them so the public can see them?

[confusedalot]

Back on topic, I have a longtime friend who won the green card lottery way back in the 80's when Canada was not excluded. (You can thank your wonderful Canadian government for lobbying against Canadians being scooped up by the Americans because they were complaining about a brain drain).

Anyways, my buddy has been at american for what, 30 years or so? Obviously, he is near the top, but still not quite at the top.

He made 390K as a 737 captain last year.

Worse still, american pays less than the other brand names.

So boys and girls, we have been, and still are getting, screwed over big time by BS excuses why the industry here cannot pay more. So much for the good old fair and just Canadian way of doing things myth and lie. Seems to me that Canadian management is at the top of the greed pile.

Can't do much about it anymore at 60 and forcibly retired. Would be happy to witness a overturn of the present condition though.

Supply and demand in this third world country has never been seen before. Hell, they pay more in other third world countries.

Time to put your pants on and just say no. Airlines won't go bankrupt, lots of the actors are making a ton of money.

[photofly]

...

[rookiepilot]

We wouldn't elect people that are truly qualified to lead us.

This, because people don't want to elect a quality leader that will make tough decisions. The media would crucify anyone who tried, regardless how honest, strong and effective they were.

People elect whoever promises the most stuff for free, loading the debt on our children, until one day that isn't possible anymore, when bond buyers won't support our debt loads.

And the media is a willing party in this too, not being remotely a beneficial or even a patriotic influence in our country.

[Diadem]

So boys and girls, we have been, and still are getting, screwed over big time by BS excuses why the industry here cannot pay more. So much for the good old fair and just Canadian way of doing things myth and lie. Seems to me that Canadian management is at the top of the greed pile.

Can't do much about it anymore at 60 and forcibly retired. Would be happy to witness a overturn of the present condition though.

Supply and demand in this third world country has never been seen before. Hell, they pay more in other third world countries.

Time to put your pants on and just say no. Airlines won't go bankrupt, lots of the actors are making a ton of money.

Actually, supply and demand is exactly what's responsible. If all the qualified pilots say no, AC will simply drop the experience requirement to 250 hours, and all the instructors making $30000/year will pounce on the opportunity; for them, $55000 is a huge raise. The reason wages have skyrocketed in the US is because they've established an artificial floor on the experience required to operate airliners, which is the exact opposite of absolute free-market supply and demand. As for management's obligation to pay more, why would they when they can still hire pilots at current wages? Their only responsibility is to maximize profits for shareholders, and giving money to employees when they don't have to will get them sacked.
If you're this upset about how little pilots earn, I'm sure you'll be leading the charge to raise the minimum wage for retail and fast food workers to $30/hour, right?

[Diadem]

So boys and girls, we have been, and still are getting, screwed over big time by BS excuses why the industry here cannot pay more. So much for the good old fair and just Canadian way of doing things myth and lie. Seems to me that Canadian management is at the top of the greed pile.

Can't do much about it anymore at 60 and forcibly retired. Would be happy to witness a overturn of the present condition though.

Supply and demand in this third world country has never been seen before. Hell, they pay more in other third world countries.

Time to put your pants on and just say no. Airlines won't go bankrupt, lots of the actors are making a ton of money.

Actually, supply and demand is exactly what's responsible. If all the qualified pilots say no, AC will simply drop the experience requirement to 250 hours, and all the instructors making $30000/year will pounce on the opportunity; for them, $55000 is a huge raise. The reason wages have skyrocketed in the US is because they've established an artificial floor on the experience required to operate airliners, which is the exact opposite of absolute free-market supply and demand. As for management's obligation to pay more, why would they when they can still hire pilots at current wages? Their only responsibility is to maximize profits for shareholders, and giving money to employees when they don't have to will get them sacked.
If you're this upset about how little pilots earn, I'm sure you'll be leading the charge to raise the minimum wage for retail and fast food workers to $30/hour, right?

[confusedalot]

sounds like a true Canadian to me. keep people poor and stupid. instead of improving things.
actually.......I would be very happy to see the working poor have a better life.
any questions?
Ah yes, canada the great......as long as the fortunate stay at the top and the inferior class know their place.
just like the British class system.

The US is far from perfect, far from it. From seeing the comments about how we are supposed to accept less than others for some reason that defies logic, pretty much tells me that Canadians actually enjoy being poorer and second class.

Meanwhile.......top 1% are filthy rich....

Think about it, the most competitive and business oriented country in the world are paying the highest rates for the hired help.

But in Canada, it is an unwritten requirement to stick your head in the sand and say yessir, pay me less for the good of the ruling class.

Two things.........

Pay is going up hugely for anyone with skills in this country. Except for airplane drivers.

As indicated before, third world countries pay more for this particular job. Pretty easy to verify.

And here we have a person justifying low pay.

Brilliant.

..

[C-GGGQ]

To make it to the vaunted "top 1%" in Canada, depending on location etc. You need to make a whopping $191k to $230k. Most senior captains here are the 1% it's really not that hard. Most people think of the top .01% even. 2.75 mil a year

[Diadem]

sounds like a true Canadian to me. keep people poor and stupid. instead of improving things.

That's quite the leap: you think that me explaining the current situation means I don't want to improve things? On the contrary, I strongly advocate for the imposition of a 1500-hour rule (or better yet, a 2000- or 3000-hour rule, but it would be much harder to justify an arbitrary hour requirement than the need for an ATPL) which would apply upward pressure on wages. That's exactly what happened in the US. What you don't seem to understand is that such action would require government intervention, and that relying on free-market solutions is what has resulted in our current situation. In order to raise wages, we need to artificially reduce supply.
It's so easy for senior airline captains who are earning $250000/year to demand that every other pilot make sacrifices, so that their wages will increase to $400000/year; they don't bear any of the risk, but expect everyone else to put their careers on the line. When you're on the top of the pile and not planning to leave your job until you retire, or already retired, it's so simple to tell the 703 pilots not to work for Air Canada and double their incomes, but when you're one of those 703 pilots you're taking a huge gamble in turning down that job. You're banking on every single other pilot turning down the job until wages go up, but even if 99% of the offers are turned down, as long as AC can fill a ground school they won't have any reason to pay more. Now, those 703 pilots are in the same low-paying jobs they were in before, and there's no prospect to improve their situations. They're relying on complete and absolute solidarity among all pilots across the country to stand together when they turn down the job, and it only takes a few turds to ruin the punch. You can't expect someone who's making $30000 to stand on principle and turn down a job paying $55000 in the hopes that, at some indeterminate point in the future, it will result in higher wages until they know with complete certainty that not a single person will take that job at the offered wage.
You took a job at SkyRegional because it was the best-paying job you could get. Isn't it rather hypocritical of you to now insist that everyone else should hold out for higher-paying positions?
Edit: After thinking more about this, I realized that this proposal can be analyzed using Game Theory, and is similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma. "Regardless of what the other decides, each prisoner gets a higher reward by betraying the other ("defecting")...Because defection always results in a better payoff than cooperation regardless of the other player's choice, it is a dominant strategy." The outcome will be better for everyone if everyone cooperates, but a single person acting in their own self-interest will result in everyone else losing, and the odds of someone else defecting are very very high; being the person who defects guarantees that you will be rewarded in some way, even if the reward is not the greatest potential reward available, until the number of defectors exceeds the number of rewards available. Furthermore, in the Prisoner's Dilemma there are only two participants, and only four possible outcomes, but for every additional person there is an additional outcome possible in which that person defects; if there are combinations allowed in which more than one person can defect, then the number of possibilities increases to the square of the number of participants, if I'm not mistaken. There will always be only one possible result where everyone cooperates and therefore everyone benefits, but every additional person exponentially increases the number of outcomes in which someone defects, so the larger the group the greater the number of negative outcomes. In a very large group, such as one with around 20000 commercial pilots, there is still only one outcome where everyone cooperates, but the number of combinations possible where one or more defect is 20000^2-1. Even if we assume that there are only, say, 500 qualified applicants to AC at any one time, that's still 500^2-1 possibilities in which one or more applicants defects, and only one in which everyone cooperates. Of course, at some point the number of defectors will become so large that there will not be enough positions available for all the defectors, and so some will gain nothing, but the important point is that there is no punishment for defecting either, so there is no cost but potentially huge personal gain. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust 5 strangers to not betray me for their own benefit, let alone 500, so the rational choice is to defect.

[BigQ]

Everybody blaming others, nobody placing the blame on themselves.

What you do matters. Not Trump, not Trudeau, not CR, not ES, you.


If you strive for metal, you will lose out on pay and conditions.
If you strive for conditions, you will lose on pay and metal.
If you strive for pay, you will lose out on metal and conditions. Increase pay too much too quickly, and you might find yourself looking for a new job.

For the longest time, Big Red was the main gig in Canada, artificially propped up by the feds. Therefore, pilots were willing to sacrifice pay and conditions to get there faster. Not anymore, but now, there is some proverbial catching up to do, if you are looking for those two. Meanwhile, the US had a whole bunch of Legacy Carriers, all competing for pilots and market share, for DECADES.

If I was to guess why US airlines are profitable with such a huge payroll footprint, I would say population density and a federal government that isn't treating national aviation as a cash cow.

Politicians only want one thing. Your vote. Don't give it to them, especially if they support initiatives against your own self interest as a Canadian pilot. As of now, there are two >1% polling parties that haven't done anything to put extra burden on Canadian Aviation. The People's Party of Canada, because they are new, and the Libertarian Party, because they haven't had anyone elected federally yet, and would probably be against such actions.

Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed frequently, and for the same reason.

[The5chord]

Looked at an article the other day when I was interested in this subject and saw the Delta CEO made 19mil a year about 300x the average wage at his company. Southwest CEO made a paltry 7 mil which was about 90x the 80,000 average salary.

I don’t know what the average wage is at WJ but I know Saretsky was only a 5 million dollar man. Calin makes 9 million over at AC. Still obscene but not like the lower wages for pilots in Canada are getting crowded out by CEO pay.

*was interesting to see that Bombardier paid its ceo 12 million to run that fine company. Not relevant here though.

Also supply and demand doesn’t explain this because the crunch is happening in the states but not at the legacy’s. Seems more of a regional airline issue at this point. I may have missed it I don’t see signing bonuses and CTP courses for AA, Delta, United and Southwest yet. The discrepancy in wages has existed before the crunch as well.

Please say something interesting in response to the information. I have already lost faith in some of you discussing Trumps sexual assault accusations etc which has nothing to do with this issue.

[confusedalot]

Couple of things here.
First, a pilot is nothing more than hired help. Just like every clerical worker, stockroom expert, secretary, bookkeeper, mechanic, accountant and lawyer.
All of these people can walk away from low pay because they have options. Management knows this, so they pay market rates.
Airplane driver? You are fucked at the starting gate. You can't go anywhere and they know it.
So, management being what they are, will do what they have to do to save a few pennies. Scrooge can't screw over the majority of the employees because he knows they will walk. Scrooge is smart though, and he knows what he can get away with.
There is no notion of merit or justice in this game. The crude law of the jungle is the operating principle.
So play the game, they actually need you now. Get the same as pretty much everyone else already has.
I had one guy quote me 1400 dollars for eyeglasses for Christ's sakes. And he did not even blink. That is the world we live in now.
No wonder there is a pilot shortage.

[CPT.HarshColdReality]

TRUMP. One of the only politician in the Western World who tries so hard and has succeed in many fronts to do EXACTLY what he has PROMISED to do in his campaign. He is a man of his WORD. He has HONOR in that way

I was hoping someone else was going to do this but I guess it’s left to me.
Remember the EXACTLY in caps was yours

Promise:balance the federal budget-its growing not shrinking
Promise:I would not be a President who took vacations-golf golf golf
Promise:cancel funding to sanctuary cities -court puts an end to that promise
Promise: he’d cut taxes and the rich would pay more-53% of Americans will pay more but he told his wealthy friends at Mar-A-Lago “you all just got a lot richer”
Promise:to end North Korea’s nuclear program-didn’t happen. He doesn’t even talk about it anymore
Promise:repeal and replace Obamacare with insurance for everyone-did not repeal or replace, however did cut funding so 4 million less Americans have health care
Promise:invest one trillion in crumbling infrastructure- after tax cuts for the rich there’s no money for this
Promise:bring down drug prices-didn’t happen
Promise:label China a “currency manipulator”- nope
Promise:won’t bomb Syria-boom
Promise:revive the struggling coal industry (because everyone want a job in a coal mine)-didn’t happen
Promise:release his taxes-lies
Promise: I WILL BUILD A WALL AND MEXICO WILL PAY FOR IT- HA HA HA still waiting for this to happen

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. If you want to edit your EXACTLY to undercase we would understand

I mentionned that he is TRYING!

[CPT.HarshColdReality]

He made 390K as a 737 captain last year.

That is INSANE. Lol what the hell is he doing to earn so bloody much. Probable line indoc, check pilot all the OT allowed by FAA regulations and what else?? Thats seems very high for narrow body Cpt. Thats more line China pay and even then....Care to elaborate!?

[CPT.HarshColdReality]

sounds like a true Canadian to me. keep people poor and stupid. instead of improving things.

That's quite the leap: you think that me explaining the current situation means I don't want to improve things? On the contrary, I strongly advocate for the imposition of a 1500-hour rule (or better yet, a 2000- or 3000-hour rule, but it would be much harder to justify an arbitrary hour requirement than the need for an ATPL) which would apply upward pressure on wages. That's exactly what happened in the US. What you don't seem to understand is that such action would require government intervention, and that relying on free-market solutions is what has resulted in our current situation. In order to raise wages, we need to artificially reduce supply.
It's so easy for senior airline captains who are earning $250000/year to demand that every other pilot make sacrifices, so that their wages will increase to $400000/year; they don't bear any of the risk, but expect everyone else to put their careers on the line. When you're on the top of the pile and not planning to leave your job until you retire, or already retired, it's so simple to tell the 703 pilots not to work for Air Canada and double their incomes, but when you're one of those 703 pilots you're taking a huge gamble in turning down that job. You're banking on every single other pilot turning down the job until wages go up, but even if 99% of the offers are turned down, as long as AC can fill a ground school they won't have any reason to pay more. Now, those 703 pilots are in the same low-paying jobs they were in before, and there's no prospect to improve their situations. They're relying on complete and absolute solidarity among all pilots across the country to stand together when they turn down the job, and it only takes a few turds to ruin the punch. You can't expect someone who's making $30000 to stand on principle and turn down a job paying $55000 in the hopes that, at some indeterminate point in the future, it will result in higher wages until they know with complete certainty that not a single person will take that job at the offered wage.
You took a job at SkyRegional because it was the best-paying job you could get. Isn't it rather hypocritical of you to now insist that everyone else should hold out for higher-paying positions?
Edit: After thinking more about this, I realized that this proposal can be analyzed using Game Theory, and is similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma. "Regardless of what the other decides, each prisoner gets a higher reward by betraying the other ("defecting")...Because defection always results in a better payoff than cooperation regardless of the other player's choice, it is a dominant strategy." The outcome will be better for everyone if everyone cooperates, but a single person acting in their own self-interest will result in everyone else losing, and the odds of someone else defecting are very very high; being the person who defects guarantees that you will be rewarded in some way, even if the reward is not the greatest potential reward available, until the number of defectors exceeds the number of rewards available. Furthermore, in the Prisoner's Dilemma there are only two participants, and only four possible outcomes, but for every additional person there is an additional outcome possible in which that person defects; if there are combinations allowed in which more than one person can defect, then the number of possibilities increases to the square of the number of participants, if I'm not mistaken. There will always be only one possible result where everyone cooperates and therefore everyone benefits, but every additional person exponentially increases the number of outcomes in which someone defects, so the larger the group the greater the number of negative outcomes. In a very large group, such as one with around 20000 commercial pilots, there is still only one outcome where everyone cooperates, but the number of combinations possible where one or more defect is 20000^2-1. Even if we assume that there are only, say, 500 qualified applicants to AC at any one time, that's still 500^2-1 possibilities in which one or more applicants defects, and only one in which everyone cooperates. Of course, at some point the number of defectors will become so large that there will not be enough positions available for all the defectors, and so some will gain nothing, but the important point is that there is no punishment for defecting either, so there is no cost but potentially huge personal gain. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust 5 strangers to not betray me for their own benefit, let alone 500, so the rational choice is to defect.

Great analysis!!!

[confusedalot]

He made 390K as a 737 captain last year.

That is INSANE. Lol what the hell is he doing to earn so bloody much. Probable line indoc, check pilot all the OT allowed by FAA regulations and what else?? Thats seems very high for narrow body Cpt. Thats more line China pay and even then....Care to elaborate!?

No bullshit, neither from me and neither from my buddy. I say again, no bullshit.

That person is a really good guy who has zero reason to lie. And, may I add, he is a former Canadian.

As far as elaboration is concerned, it is simply all about the rather boring pay structure details. Nope, not a checker, not management, not about bonuses or anything like that. Simple line captain, but he is at the top of the scale after decades.

Which brings me to the real problem here in canadastan. For some strange reason that my limited brain capacity cannot grasp, this population chooses to accept whatever scraps are thrown at them, and worse still, pay levels for virtually everyone else in this sorry country keep going up, and up, and up.
But noooo.............airplane drivers are somehow required by some unwritten law to be happy with what they get.
FedEx, Delta, and a few others pay more than American.
Man, I was born in the wrong country. Living a limited life having done the same job that others around the world actually made a decent life.
As many have said, no wonder there is a looming pilot shortage.
For the sceptics, you only need to spend 3 minutes googling the facts.

[confusedalot]

sounds like a true Canadian to me. keep people poor and stupid. instead of improving things.

That's quite the leap: you think that me explaining the current situation means I don't want to improve things? On the contrary, I strongly advocate for the imposition of a 1500-hour rule (or better yet, a 2000- or 3000-hour rule, but it would be much harder to justify an arbitrary hour requirement than the need for an ATPL) which would apply upward pressure on wages. That's exactly what happened in the US. What you don't seem to understand is that such action would require government intervention, and that relying on free-market solutions is what has resulted in our current situation. In order to raise wages, we need to artificially reduce supply.
It's so easy for senior airline captains who are earning $250000/year to demand that every other pilot make sacrifices, so that their wages will increase to $400000/year; they don't bear any of the risk, but expect everyone else to put their careers on the line. When you're on the top of the pile and not planning to leave your job until you retire, or already retired, it's so simple to tell the 703 pilots not to work for Air Canada and double their incomes, but when you're one of those 703 pilots you're taking a huge gamble in turning down that job. You're banking on every single other pilot turning down the job until wages go up, but even if 99% of the offers are turned down, as long as AC can fill a ground school they won't have any reason to pay more. Now, those 703 pilots are in the same low-paying jobs they were in before, and there's no prospect to improve their situations. They're relying on complete and absolute solidarity among all pilots across the country to stand together when they turn down the job, and it only takes a few turds to ruin the punch. You can't expect someone who's making $30000 to stand on principle and turn down a job paying $55000 in the hopes that, at some indeterminate point in the future, it will result in higher wages until they know with complete certainty that not a single person will take that job at the offered wage.
You took a job at SkyRegional because it was the best-paying job you could get. Isn't it rather hypocritical of you to now insist that everyone else should hold out for higher-paying positions?
Edit: After thinking more about this, I realized that this proposal can be analyzed using Game Theory, and is similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma. "Regardless of what the other decides, each prisoner gets a higher reward by betraying the other ("defecting")...Because defection always results in a better payoff than cooperation regardless of the other player's choice, it is a dominant strategy." The outcome will be better for everyone if everyone cooperates, but a single person acting in their own self-interest will result in everyone else losing, and the odds of someone else defecting are very very high; being the person who defects guarantees that you will be rewarded in some way, even if the reward is not the greatest potential reward available, until the number of defectors exceeds the number of rewards available. Furthermore, in the Prisoner's Dilemma there are only two participants, and only four possible outcomes, but for every additional person there is an additional outcome possible in which that person defects; if there are combinations allowed in which more than one person can defect, then the number of possibilities increases to the square of the number of participants, if I'm not mistaken. There will always be only one possible result where everyone cooperates and therefore everyone benefits, but every additional person exponentially increases the number of outcomes in which someone defects, so the larger the group the greater the number of negative outcomes. In a very large group, such as one with around 20000 commercial pilots, there is still only one outcome where everyone cooperates, but the number of combinations possible where one or more defect is 20000^2-1. Even if we assume that there are only, say, 500 qualified applicants to AC at any one time, that's still 500^2-1 possibilities in which one or more applicants defects, and only one in which everyone cooperates. Of course, at some point the number of defectors will become so large that there will not be enough positions available for all the defectors, and so some will gain nothing, but the important point is that there is no punishment for defecting either, so there is no cost but potentially huge personal gain. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust 5 strangers to not betray me for their own benefit, let alone 500, so the rational choice is to defect.

Hummm.........
The fact that you took the time to identify me as a former sky regional employee like some bullshit cop gives me the willies.
But anyway, you did not seem to understand why I ended up there in the first place.
Can U say "previous employer ceased operations?". No you can't, cuz it never happenned to you.
Can U say " I have to pay the bills?". Nope, yer all comfy and cozy in your very secure job.
Can U say "I am 52 and I am out of a job?"
Nope, yer 40 and you think you are invincible. Nothing bad is going to happen to you, right?

Never pull that kind of shit on me again. I have done a whole hell of a lot more than sky regional in my life. As in, rather large pieces of metal going around the world.

But enough of you, in my old age defined by aviation as 60, perhaps I would like to assist the up and comers to NOT fall for the BS that the beancounters foist on their employees.

Low pay for pilots as a necessity is total bullshit.

15% of employees are airplane drivers, which means that everyone else are in skillsets that are required by any industry. And guess what, those 85% get standard pay increases just like the rest of the whole wide world.
Pilots are supposed to accept substandard pay? Really? What?
Explain please.
In case you have not noticed, cost for everything keeps going up and up.

[C.W.E.]

15% of employees are airplane drivers, which means that everyone else are in skillsets that are required by any industry. And guess what, those 85% get standard pay increases just like the rest of the whole wide world.
Pilots are supposed to accept substandard pay? Really? What?
Explain please.

The employers could lower the wages and there would still be pilots who would fly for them because they just love to fly.