Greg Roach's Berkshires Blog
Sunday, April 08, 2007
  The 48% F-Bomb
I wonder if any news outlets will actually dig a little deeper into this.
ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) — A Northwest Airlines flight was canceled because the pilot was yelling obscenities during a cellphone conversation while people were boarding, and cursed one passenger, a federal official said Saturday.

The pilot of the Las Vegas-to-Detroit flight was apparently in a heated cellphone conversation in the cockpit, then went into a lavatory, locked the door and continued the conversation, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Saturday.
Perhaps this episode has something to do with the fact that since a Bankruptcy Judge basically broke Northwest's unions, the people who fly these planes have taken a 48% pay cut.

That's right, folks. They've had their paychecks cut in half while their work hours have been extended by several *days* a month. (The airline can't put them in the air for more time, but it can leave them stranded away from home at a Motel 6 in Minot, ND. And that ain't good for family life.)

According to someone who would know, medical leaves and such, are way WAY up.

Kinda' makes you want to drive.....
 
Comments:
re:
"Kinda makes you want to drive."

Driving is much more expensive. You can buy a round trip ticket from Boston to Los Angeles today for $238.

If you drove a magic car that got 35 mpg and needed no maintenance or insurance, and you used a magic credit card that let you pay only $2.50/gal for gas, and you didn't need to stop for sleep for the 90 hours and 6010 miles of the round trip, or need any food for the same period...

...it would still cost you $429.28 to drive.

You could pack yourself into a box and ship yourself as freight. The round trip would take 8 days. Assuming you were small and took only enough luggage to fit into a 200 lb. package, it would cost $792.46.

If 8 days in a box is undesireable, you could ship yourself as overnight freight. The round trip would then cost you $2041.60.

The passenger airline industry in this country is completely broken. Freight pilots are paid 3 to 4 times as much as passenger pilots, their companies are making record profits, and no one is asking them to take pay cuts.

Think about that.
 
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