TIRED OF THE TOPIC - ESPECIALLY TODAY (May 2023)

Just back from playing in a member-guest at #BallyhackGolfClub in Roanoke with good friend #DanTrumbower. I am 65 today and I really do not want to write about pilot issues again, but I am going to. It really is a love-hate thing with me. I very much respect the profession and the many great pilot leaders I have watched and learned from over my now 40+ year career. But ...

In my last post, I spoke to #SkyWest pursuing a Part 135 operation and the fact that organized pilot labor throws stones at the company from the deck of its glass house. I wrote, "with desperate communities seeking air service of any kind, their pro-rate business is potentially one catalyst for it to grow. #ALPA gets excited about SKYW's public charter thinking. How dare someone try to be creative when we have erected an artificial barrier to growth?

But this is not about my cynical take on the need to "common sense" today's EAS program but rather to be cynical about organized pilot labor's comments about the number of studies being done on reducing the crew complement.

#SeanBroderick at #AviationWeek wrote that "three major pilots’ unions are taking aim at projects underway at #Airbus and #Dassault as well as the #EuropeanUnionAviationSafetyAgency (EASA) that are exploring reduced crew operations concepts and, eventually, large aircraft designed for a single pilot". The technology IS available to enable such an undertaking.

Broderick makes the point that it is the manufacturers’ push to embrace automation, and the regulators’ desire to work with them that seem to be the primary drivers.

Thinking about the current operating environment, I might start to dub it as Deregulation Part II (aka post-COVID). It was right after the Part I bill was passed that the industry began to move from a 3-person flight deck to 2. There was thinking about the need to reduce costs to best compete in that new economic environment. Trust me, we will talk about costs again in the post-COVID world.

I say: keep studying the hell out of it. While U.S. airlines may not be making any public pronouncements at this stage, given the trajectory of costs in an industry that is commoditized at its core, nothing should be "off the table" when organized pilot labor will not "come to the table" to discuss pilot training in the U.S.

Today, SKYWs thinking is about a solution that a smart publicly traded company needs to explore to put growth back into its investment equation. ALPA should understand that it is exactly what markets do when artificial impediments are created because you won't meet and confer on anything you don't agree with. And please stop with your bullshit safety numbers you ascribe to the FOQ rule being 100% responsible for.

Organized pilot labor is benefiting from artificial leverage in negotiations today. Keep studying the safety issues of a smaller flight deck complement.

As for the #,### rule - IF THEY WON'T MEET THEN REDUCE A SEAT.