Goal Unrealistic, Job Bank Says : Pilot Shortage May Harm United Replacement Plan
A nationwide airline pilot shortage is likely to undermine United Airlines’ plan to hire enough experienced pilots to replace the 5,200 members of the Air Line Pilots Assn. who walked off their jobs a week ago, officials of a national pilot job bank predicted Thursday.
United’s goal of recruiting and training enough pilots to restore about 10% of its decimated flight schedule each month is unrealistic, owners of the Atlanta-based Future Aviation Professionals of America said.
Kim Darby, vice president of the organization, which has done consulting work for both the airline and the pilots union, suggested that United would do well to attract half of the 600 new pilots it hopes to add each month.
A United spokesman said that the pessimism was unjustified and that the airline has been contacted by “at least 1,100 fully qualified fleet-trained captains and first officers who are in the interview process and the hiring process” at the airline’s Denver training facility. He said the pilots now work for other commercial airlines but were attracted by United’s higher wages.
At the same time, however, United backed away from a pledge made earlier in the week to quickly increase the number of flights.
On Wednesday, the airline announced that it had adopted a “reliable, dependable” schedule of 209 flights from 41 airports that it would fly through the end of May. That is about 13.5% of the 1,550 daily flights normally flown by United, the nation’s largest commercial carrier.
The airline said flights would be added by the beginning of June, when newly hired pilots would have gone through the required 10 to 12 days of training in Denver.
But on Thursday, spokesman Alan Wayne said the base schedule of 209 flights will last through June 15. “Day-to-day adjustments” will be made to add flights on the West Coast and to Honolulu when required, he added.
The base schedule calls for seven flights from Los Angeles, seven from San Francisco and two from San Diego.
The 209-flight schedule represents a decrease from the 220 trips United managed to fly on Saturday, the second day of the strike.
Slowness in Rebuilding
One airline industry analyst, who asked not to be identified, said United’s slowness in rebuilding appears to indicate that it has not found additional pilots as quickly as it had expected.
United officials hope that their threat of rebuilding the airline with newly hired pilots will force the pilots union to reach a settlement.
However, job bank official Darby noted that the airline’s goal of adding 600 pilots a month is higher than the 583 pilots the entire airline industry plans to hire during an average month in 1985.
“I don’t think that’s realistic,” Louis Smith, president of the job bank, said. “The supply of people is at a record low, and demand is at a record high.”
Darby said airlines using turbine-powered equipment hired more than 5,000 pilots in 1984, the highest level recorded by the 10-year-old aviation career information service.
Jobless Rate About 4%
Pilot demand began growing in early 1984, when airlines started to expand under the influence of a recovering economy. According to the job bank’s files of 13,000 pilots, the unemployment rate is about 4%, with another 1,450 pilots now furloughed by their airlines.
In addition, Darby said, fewer pilots are available from the military, which traditionally has been a strong supplier of airline pilots but is now retaining a greater percentage of pilots eligible for separation. And commuter and corporate flight departments are recording high rates of turnover.
Darby said United should have little trouble recruiting flight engineers, so-called second officers whose credentials need include only a commercial aviation license. United expects that it will take about a month to train flight engineers.
United’s real problem lies in finding the persons who fly the planes: first officers and captains, who must have thousands of hours of piloting experience, Smith and Darby said.
Salaries of $75,000
To attract experienced pilots, United is offering $75,000 salaries to captains and $50,000 to first officers, substantially above the wages paid by many other airlines and far above the airline’s proposed scale. Any back-to-work agreement would guarantee that pilots hired during the strike are kept on at that wage, Wayne said.
Because “there aren’t that many unemployed pilots, they have to recruit people from other companies,” Smith said. And many pilots who are enticed by higher wages will not sign on with United because of “peer pressure,” he said.
About 96% of airline pilots are union members, and a pilot who crosses a picket line can expect to be ostracized the rest of his life, Smith said.
One of the approximately 270 United pilots who refused to join the strike, Capt. Clyde Cable, acknowledged in an interview Thursday that “I’m sure there are people I’ve considered friends that will never speak to me again.”
But Cable said he he felt that his union was wrong in opposing the airline’s proposed two-tier wage scale, which would provide lower salaries for newly hired pilots. United has said it needs the scale to remain cost competitive.
‘Pay More for Its Help’
The company “can’t charge the same for a seat when it has to pay more for its help,” said Cable, a 34-year United veteran based in Los Angeles.
The union argues that the proposal would result in great disparities in pay, with some new pilots earning about half the wages of their veteran counterparts.
A fourth day of negotiations to settle the strike began Thursday afternoon in Chicago after an unproductive 16-hour session that ended in the early-morning hours.
“It’s been worked over, massaged and picked apart,” Helen Witt, chairman of the National Mediation Board, said.
The pilot union’s president, Henry Duffy, said from his Washington office that he believes that negotiators are close to breaking off talks.
“We have moved the pieces around so much--just aren’t many more ways to go,” Duffy said.
Meanwhile, the union announced that striking United pilots would receive $1,000 per month from the labor organization beginning in June under a plan approved by its executive committee.
