You reap what you sow

Meet Glenn Tilton. 

Mr. Tilton is the CEO of the UAL corporation which operates United Airlines, Ted, and numerous other subsidiaries both in and out of the aviation industry. With a handsome compensation of $10.3 million per year, he ranks among the highest paid CEO's in the business. Tilton went to UAL in September 2002 in an effort by the board of directors to spring the airline from financial ruin. Shortly after he took office, the airline filed chapter 11 and Tilton made reductions in the employee payroll (remember subparagraph E of section 1113?), started TED, and made other changes that got the airline back out of bankruptcy in February 2006. As a bonus for "saving" the company, the board granted him over $39 million in stock options and other compensations. 

Now that you know a little of his background, have a look at this UAL press release from back in July of 2008:

United Takes Action to Protect Customers, Employees

July 30, 2008

United Seeks Injunction to Stop Unlawful Job Actions of ALPA and Certain Pilots

Chicago, July 30, 2008 - United Airlines today filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to stop the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and certain pilots from continuing to engage in deliberate, organized and unlawful job actions that resulted in hundreds of flights being canceled and impacted thousands of customers and employees.

 The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction against ALPA and four named pilots for organized sick leave abuse in opposition to the company’s plan to reduce its fleet size and furlough pilots and to pressure United into renegotiating terms of a collective bargaining agreement that remains in effect through 2009. The lawsuit also seeks an end to a public campaign of intimidation that discourages pilots from picking up additional flying, effectively engaging in a slowdown.

 "It is absolutely irresponsible for ALPA to promote unlawful behavior, particularly in this environment, when the industry is taking unprecedented actions to offset record fuel costs," said Pete McDonald, executive vice president and chief administrative officer. "Our employees are working hard to make our company successful. We are going to ensure the integrity of our operation and will not allow the actions of ALPA and certain pilots to continue to harm our customers, our employees and our company."

 McDonald said the company pursued every other possible resolution—at significant financial cost—before pursuing litigation. These included increasing reserve pilot staffing and negotiating with ALPA to modify some of the work rules in the current agreement.

 United also noted that the rate of first officer sick leave in certain fleets is up 103 percent this summer. Further, driven by ALPA directives and intimidation, picking up additional flying, as is standard practice throughout the industry, has dropped precipitously compared to that of previous years. In 2006, pilots were five times more likely to fly additional trips compared to today.

 "The job actions have escalated, and the impact on our customers and employees is unacceptable, and must stop," McDonald said.

UAL would have the public believe that it is being victimized. How dare ALPA demand good pay for its pilots? How dare they do such an awful thing when the company is taking "unprecedented actions to offset record fuel costs," and "every other possible resolution" to "ensure the integrity of [their] operation." Here's the paradox: The same man who claims to be acting in the best interest of his employees is the one pushing for them to be laid off. 

Did the board even once consider reducing their own multi-million dollar paychecks before deciding to kick Joe F.O. and his family back onto the street to save $20 an hour by not having him on the payroll anymore? Go and ask any small business owner how much money he pays himself- and why so little, and he'll talk to you about re-investing profits back into the company and living within your means so that the company can grow to be healthy and strong. Airlines have lost sight of this principle. They handsomly reward the CEOs for doing a bad job, and fire the pilots even when they're doing a good job. 

ALPA responded today, and here's what they had to say-

United Pilots: Glenn Tilton’s Excessive Pay Package Must Go

Chicago, Ill., September 29, 2008 – Pilots for United Airlines (Nasdaq: UAUA) today demanded that the UAL Board of Directors cut the pay for its CEO, Glenn Tilton, as a reflection of concern and solidarity with passengers and employees who are being forced to tighten their belts.

At $10.3 million a year, Tilton’s compensation package—including salary, stock grants, options, and other added extras—is the highest in the airline industry. The CEO of American Airlines is paid $4.6 million a year, the CEO of Southwest Airlines makes $1.3 million, and the CEO of JetBlue gets $514,000. United’s pilots believe that there is no justifiable reason for the worst airline executive to be compensated the most. United Airlines has lost more money this year than nearly all other U.S. competitors combined.

“United Airlines is losing money, cutting back on service, and asking passengers to pay more for less,” said Captain Steve Wallach, Chairman of the United Chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. “It’s time for the Board to tie Tilton’s pay to his performance.”

Captain Wallach said that Tilton’s level of compensation is another example of excessive pay to chief executive officers. “His pay is not an entitlement; he should have to earn his money, just like everyone else does,” said the union leader. Captain Wallach noted United’s stock price has fallen from over $50 a share to the current price of about $10 a share.

“It’s an insult to the loyal passengers and hard-working employees of United to see the CEO pull down this kind of money when the airline is facing such deep challenges,” added Captain Wallach. “This pay package must go.”

Tilton’s excessive pay package is only one of a series of bad decisions by the management of United, which orchestrated fat bonuses for its top executives when the company came out of bankruptcy two years ago. Tilton and his team of executives have continually looked after themselves, to the detriment of the rank-and-file employees of the airline.

“The pilots want to do everything possible to make United the airline that passengers choose first,” said Captain Wallach. “A commitment to responsible service and fairness is part of that.”

You reap what you sow, Glenn.

The Expendable New-hire

One of my friends from work got "tentatively" hired on as an FO at PSA about five months ago. He had about four hundred hours total with around 85 multiengine hours, but he had some glass cockpit experience which his interviewer found desireable. At that time, PSA's published hiring minimums were 600 total time and 100 multi, so it was a pretty big deal when they even gave him a second look, much more so when they offered him a deal. His interviewer told him that PSA would hire him if he passed a jet transition course from ATP, a Jacksonville, FL based flight school renowned for its accelerated pilot training.

having returned from this interview, he asked me what I recommended that he should do. I told him that I thought that it would be a better idea to use that 6k for getting his initial CFI and thereby earning a permanent license that he could use for the rest of his life as a safety net, should he need it later to earn a living. "Besides," I told him, "you will get the jet training for free when you get hired on at the regionals."

"Yeah, but time is money. If I can get into a regional now, I'll be better off later on by being higher up on the seniority list," said he.

"Well, its your money. I just think that its an awfully large gamble for some training that you will eventually get while on someone else's payroll. You really should get your CFI for those furloughs that you will ineviably face at some time in your career."

He didn't take my advice. I dont blame him for it, either. PSA had a carrot infront of him and he had a wife and some student loans to take care of, and he wasn't going to make ends meet scrubbing down dirty airplanes for the next year. He got a loan and was off the jacksonville for the following week.

He came back with a plethora of knowledge about the CRJ (canadair regional jet) and its systems. If you had a question about anything jet related, he was the go-to guy. ATP certainly did its job, and I thought that he was going to be sitting right seat in a jet within a month. He faxed his certificate of course completion to PSA's recruiting office and got no reply. He emailed his interviewer, made phone calls, did everything but send smoke signals... but got no answer from his PSA contact. Finally, some weeks after his graduation from ATP, he got a call from recruiting telling him that they had suspended hiring. The call ended with the standard, but always cordial: "Thank you for your interest in PSA."

And that was that. He didn't get the job even though he had upheld his end of their deal. He started off as a commercial pilot with multiengine and instrument ratings and ended up right back where he started, but now with an additional $6000 dollars in debt and nothing to show for it but a turbine transition course diploma that was worth no more to him than the paper it was printed on. I havent heard back from him about where he went from there, but I don't think that he landed a job at an airline any time soon, considering the current state of the economy, the extension of the mandatory retirement age to 65, and oil prices on the rise.

I've never seen an industry so bereft of respect towards human beings as the airline industry. Another friend of mine was hired by a different airline, maybe TSA or Express Jet, and spend thousands relocating his family to attend ground school. During the first week of training, the director of recruiting walked into the classroom and told them all that their class had been cancelled due to "unforseen financial reasons." He told the new hires that their resumes were still on file and that they would be contacted to join a future class at an unknown time in the future.

Put youself in these people's shoes for a moment. You just quit your job, moved out of your apartment, dragged your family across the country, and moved into a town where you didnt know a single soul so that you could take the next step in your aviation career. You footed the bill for the deposit on a new apartment or the down payment on a new home, not to mention the travel expenses and lost time at your previous job. All of these new-fires were now out of work, no plan b, and maybe with no way to get back home without help from family or personal loans. This friend of mine returned broke and defeated to his cubicle next to mine in the CFI office a few days later.

Believe it or not, I actually have other examples of good pilots hired and then let go for poor reasons, or for no reasons at all. To keep it simple, another CFI friend of mine was fired from training just for being in the room when his sim-partner failed a checkride... he never got a chance to take his own checkride.

It seems that when airlines forsee a need for new pilots, they are quick to hire them in droves with no real thought to whether they will actually need so many of them once they finish their training- leading them to terminate some if not all of them before they even finish ground school.

Airline Pilot Blacklisting

For any of you who didn't believe what I said about blacklisting in the airline industry, here's some proof.

http://www.box.net/shared/ay9un0uo0w

This link actually mentions a man named Frank Lorenzo. This man was notorious for driving airlines into bankruptcy exactly for the purpose of absolving the labor contracts and making his own. He was the CEO of Continental Airlines in the early eighties after taking it over with his holding company, Texas Air. Prior to 1984, companies had the right to permanently remove labor contracts while in chapter 11 and create brand new ones without much that the pilots union could do to stop it. The union at Continental went on strike, but Frank Lorenzo hired new pilots and simply replaced the striking pilots with "scabs." The individuals who crossed the picket line to go to work endured vandalism of their private property, death threats, beatings, and even parcel bombs. Every pilot that worked for Lorenzo during this time period was permanently labeled a scab and their names were recorded in a little black book that airline pilots carried for years to come. Stories exist of pilots asking the captain of a departing flight if they could catch a ride in the jumpseat, only to have the captain ask their name, search his little black book of scabs, and tell them to take a cab after he spots it on the list.

A little closer to home

Last week, I was sitting in a meeting at work here in Phoenix. Prior to arriving at the meeting, i had heard rumors about some drastic changes taking place within the company, but nothing as big as the one that I was about to be struck with. Here's some background:

I moved my little family out to Phoenix, AZ in July of 2008 to work at a promising flight training academy. I learned about the job online on one of those "so you're still eating ramen noodles.com" websites for pilots looking for greener pastures. I was working at a prominent flight school in Utah as a CFI where I was on duty about six hours a day and only got paid for 3. For those of you who are or who were CFIs you know how this works. You show up twenty minutes before your first student arrives to ensure that your lesson is ready and that the airplane that you had scheduled wasn't down for maintenance. Then your phone rings, its your student, he's sick... again and cant make the lesson. A funny thing typically happens during flight training- a friendship develops between the CFI and his student. I was one of those soft instructors who just couldn't bear the thought of telling my friend/student/college buddy that I just charged him the full $60 for my time and the $300 no-show for the airplane time for his failure to give 24 hours cancellation notice. So I lost money. I lost time. I sat around at the airport studying my Jeppesen Airway Manual and finger-flying approaches. I had to get a second job as a lineman fueling airplanes, sweeping, mopping, answering phones, invoicing flights, and being a general company lackey that did whatever the boss needed, even construction work at the airport, whatever I could to fill in the gaps caused by an array of unreliable students, maintenance, and weather cancellations. I earned more working for $9 an hour as a lineman than I did as a part time CFI.

Let me say that another way, just to make sure this is clear. I earned more at the job where the only requirement was to be warm-blooded, than I did working as a CFI which cost me over $50,000 in tuition and training to become certified.

So naturally, I was constantly screening the internet looking for jobs that paid more and offered a steady stream of students. I thought I had found what I was looking for in Phoenix, so I agreed to an interview. The voice on the phone promised a large multi-engine fleet, state-of-the-art Cirrus airplanes as their primary single engine trainer, and to top it off, a large starting salary! At the interview, I asked my interviewer, who would later be my boss, if I could make my own schedule. He said yes, as long as your students progress, you can work whatever hours you like. That was excellent news, I'd finally work for a company that evaluated me not based on the hours at work, but on the progress of my students. I agreed to take the job.

I'm not sure how it came up during the first week of orientation, but one of the other new hires asked our instructor when we would get paid. Training was two weeks long and we had rent coming due. The instructor looked surprised, saying "Oh, didn't they tell you in your interviews that training was not paid?" we all shook our heads. It would be a month until we would get our first paychecks, meanwhile, I had to withdraw money from a retirement fund just to eat and fill up my tank. Towards the end of the 2-week orientation, the instructors told us where we could get our uniforms, and how much they would cost. Another hand went up "Wait a second, isnt the company going to pay for our uniforms?" "No," the instructor said "the company only lends you your epaulets and the company insignia, both of which must be returned when you terminate your employment with us." Luckily, I still had my pilot shirt from my prior CFI job and avoided the brunt of those costs, but I did have to buy the tie. "When are we going to get our standardization flights in the Cirrus?" I asked. The instructor shook his head and said we haven't flown the Cirruses in months. We train all our private pilot students in the '152s and the instrument students fly the '172s." Someone else asked when we declare what days off we wanted, the instructor said that our days off were decided by a seniority bid. So much for making our own schedule. We were flabbergasted at this information that had somehow lost its way to us during the hiring process, but no matter, we still had the promise of a handsome salary, and that was enough to make us shrug off the disillusionment.

It wasnt long after I started that the company began further restricting our ability to make our own schedules. As a CFII, I was training only instrument students, and word came down from the top that in order to get maximum utilization out of the fleet, we were no longer able to fly in the mornings, and had to begin all our flights at 1pm. Have you ever been in Phoenix, AZ in august at 2pm? The soles of your shoes melt to the tarmac, and thats no joke. Later, they restricted our launch times to after 3pm, putting me home anywhere between 9pm and sometimes midnight. I never got to see my wife because hers was a daytime schedule. We only saw each other when we were walking in or out the door, or when one of us was already in bed asleep. We moved down here because of the prospect of me making my schedule to match hers so that we could balance it all out and still get to spend time together. So we made the best of it and I found little ways to work my schedule to get me home at semi-decent times while still ensuring that the students progressed in a timely manner.

Then came last week's meeting... I found a spot in the back with another CFI who had come down with me from Utah and took a seat next to him. The meeting started off with the good news... CFI of the month, company news, etc. Then came the whopper. The Chief of Training stood and spoke for about ten minutes about how the company would never sabotage us, nor would he ever want to be in a position to take anything away from us. After buttering us up for a bit, he let it loose: "Effective Monday, we are canceling all your salaries and moving to an hourly wage system, furthermore, management is taking control of your schedules, so you will not be able to schedule yourselves. Scheduling will be on a seniority bid system and you will be slated to fly according to the company's need... day or night.... 24 hours a day."

You could have cut the tension in the room with a knife as he detailed the rest of the changes. Here were sixty CFI's who had moved from all over the country, spending thousands on their moving expenses in response to this company's promises of everything that a CFI could ever want, only to be told that they should have just stayed home. Hands went up, angry comments were made, afterwards CFIs quit on the spot. Malicious emails were disseminated throughout the company's email. Worse yet, I had to go home and tell my wife that our hopes of synchronizing our schedules were lost. And that I had no guarantee that I would get to see her much at all. I can't move back to Utah, because the move is too expensive, plus I'd have to reimburse this company for the $500 moving allowance it gave me to come down, and I have a year lease on my apartment that I cant get out of without paying huge severance fees. Looks like we're staying here and riding it out, it's the best chance we've got.

That was the only company meeting that I had been to where the owner of the academy failed to be present.

The Delta Scam

Recently, Delta airlines was under chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while it re-organized the company to return to profitability. Perhaps the most intriguing section of chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy code is section 1113, which sets the rules regarding an employer's rejection of a collective bargaining agreement, specifically in subparagraphs c, d, and e. Its important to have a basic understanding of the kind of leverage that these paragraphs give the employer during the bankruptcy restructuring process.

Subparagraph e provides for those notorious little interim contract changes that the employers are allowed to make during the negotiation process. To put it simply, 'e' allows the employer to go through the current labor contract with a red pen and white-out and slash wages, benefits, and any other allowances that it previously agreed upon with the employee union. I know what you're asking now- What would the bankruptcy judge have to say about that?? Here's the answer: if the cuts proposed by the employer (referred to here as the "trustee/debtor") are "[1] essential to the continuation of the debtor's business, OR [2] in order to avoid irreparable damage to the estate, the court, after notice and a hearing, may authorize the trustee to implement interim changes in the terms, conditions, wages, benefits, or work rules provided by a collective bargaining agreement. Any hearing under this paragraph shall be scheduled in accordance with the needs of the trustee." -quoted from US Bankruptcy code 1113(e), emphasis added. So there you have it folks. All your company has to do to keep afloat while under their bankruptcy umbrella is prove to the court that YOUR wage cuts, not theirs, will save the company from floundering. I think that the most important word in this subparagraph is the word "or," which I have bolded, italicized, and all-capsed for your viewing clarity. Lawyers call this a disjunctive test, meaning that only one criterion must be met in order to get approval from the judge to make the changes, not both.

An article by ALPA clearly illustrates the point:

On Thursday, June 5, [2008] ALPA Managing Attorney Marcus Migliore and AFL-CIO representatives testified before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary’s Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee to urge Congress to swiftly reform Section 1113 of the Bankruptcy Code. Migliore underscored the urgent need to prevent airline and other management from exploiting the law to gut employee labor contracts and deny workers their most powerful leverage in bargaining—the right to strike—while corporate executives pay themselves millions in bonuses.

“Employers, including airlines, have successfully hijacked the 1113 process from Congress’ original intent to protect workers and their families and now use it as a 51-day countdown to unilaterally terminate employees’ hard-won contracts,” said Migliore. “Skyrocketing fuel costs and a sluggish economy mean that bankruptcy continues to loom as a threat to airline employees--the time is now for Congress to act decisively to protect U.S. workers.”

“Management uses current bankruptcy law to rubberstamp multi-million dollar rewards for the very corporate executives and stakeholders who made the business decisions that led to the airlines’ bankruptcies in the first place,” said ALPA’s President, Capt. John Prater, when commenting on Migliore’s testimony. “Meanwhile, pilots and workers are locked into long-term, deeply concessionary contracts."

This is like ordering all the second and third class passengers on a sinking ship to toss their belongings overboard while the first class passengers keep their thousands of pounds of junk that are ultimately causing the ship to sink in the first place. Our bankruptcy code actually protects a similar practice that is happening today in airline management. Which is exactly what happened to the employees of Delta Airlines. Delta executives pushed for a reduction of salaries, pensions, benefits, and so forth from its employees in order to stave off destruction. Now, why on earth would a pilot with a mortgage, a wife, and kids agree to a pay cut? Because if the company goes under, he's back on the street and has to start over at a new airline at the bottom of the seniority list, with the worst schedule and the worst pay that his next company has to offer. So its understandable that the pilots union accepted their pay cuts in order to help Delta airlines, and their livelihoods, remain afloat. Where did their millions of dollars go? Into the pockets of the delta executives who used the money to pad their severance packages and to give themselves bonuses.

A dose of reality.

I know why you want to be a pilot. You’re what I call a dreamer- head in the clouds, ambitious, thinking that you’ve got the whole world at your feet. It’s a convenient cloak of pride that you can wrap around yourself, confident that you can rise quickly through the system and claim a seat in the cockpit of a triple-seven working for a major airline flying three times a week and bringing home six figures. You’ll have a nice house, cars, a great wife who broods over your successes, maybe a few kids. It’s a simple zero-to-hero plan that you’ve worked out in your mind that makes perfect sense to you: climb the ladder, work the politics, fly the big stuff, and come home to your American dream.

Being a professional pilot takes a small fortune and some major sacrifices. To understand it best, lets look at the pros and cons:

Pros:
1. You get to fly!
2. You get to fly multi-million dollar jets surrounded by a high tech cockpit.
3. The right to wear aviator sunglasses.
4. The uniform.
5. Travel to exotic places and not have to pay for hotels.
6. Great pay... as a senior pilot.
7. No working at home on special projects- no deadlines while you're off the clock.
8. Buddy passes and travel perks for you and your family.
9. You're the easiest guy to shop for on holidays and birthdays. Just refer them to the pilot shop.
10. You get schmoozed by FBOs with free coffee, soft drinks, cookies, pilot lounges with satellite TV, huge couches, dozing rooms, Internet access, and even concierge services.
11. The conversation always turns to you when you mention that you're a professional pilot. People always want to hear about what goes on on the other side of the cockpit door.
12. Camaraderie. Nobody understands a pilot like another pilot.
13. Can anybody say mach meter?
14. It doesnt matter what you say after beginning a sentence with "So I was a flight level 350..." It instantly sounds cool.
15. Unlimited sick days.
16. You're the only guy at the airport who enjoys being there.
17. You get to be in command of over 30 million dollars' worth of airplane, people, and cargo at a time.
18. If you fly corporate, you get to mix and mingle with the corporate elite, even sharing in their adventures like golfing with them in the Bahamas, or going skiing in Aspen.
19. If you're charismatic enough to develop an extensive network, you could get that plush job that wasnt published on find-a-pilot.com. Its who you know, not what.
20. You have a little computer that does everything for you from just after takeoff and all the way to touchdown called the autopilot. You just sit back, sip your soda, and talk about the wife and kids with the cockpit crew.


Cons:
1. Poor job security
2. Work holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, soccer games, nights, days, weekends, etc.
3. If you commute, you'll spend your days off on a plane heading to and from work.
4. Forced loyalties to a union- if they go on strike, YOU go on strike.
5. Forced retirement if you lose your medical.
6. Horrible starting pay, sometimes as low as $16 per hour.
7. Duty time is different from billable time. When you're preflighting the airplane, greeting passengers, etc, you don't get paid! You only get paid your full wage when the cabin door shuts for the flight.
8. Each company has its own seniority list. If you switch to another airline, your seniority gets reset to zero. If your airline of even 20 years goes bankrupt, you start all over again from the bottom.
9. Some airlines do not pay for training (in fact, some require YOU to pay for it).
10. Your job depends on numerous stimuli- primarily oil prices, global and domestic economic swings, and terrorist actions. If any one of these things twitches, you could be on the street.
11. Blacklisting. If you turn your back on your union, you'll wind up on a blacklist that labels you a 'scab' for the rest of your career. Good luck trying to get a new job, new pilot friends, jumpseats, etc. after this happens. Its the airline pilot's equivalent of the guillotine.
12. Top-heavy management. You can rest assured that the wigs on top will happily cancel your pension, reduce your pay, or furlough you to resolve the very financial burdens of the company that their million-dollar salaries and golden parachutes (severance packages) have caused. See my posting on the recent Delta Airlines deal for a great example.
13. You will spend a fortune on flight training (sometimes $50k-$90k) only to squabble over the entry-level First Officer positions, rarely more than $25 an hour.
14. Imbalanced family life. You spend so much time away from home that it creates an enormous burden on your spouse, who is left at home to wonder who you love more- your family, or your jet. I guarantee you, when you're lying on your death bed surrounded by your children and grandchildren, you won't be thinking about how you should have gotten more overtime.
15. You don't get the respect you deserve as a highly skilled professional. Hundreds of lives are in your hands every time you light the engines, yet you are regarded as expendable by your company management who has, in some cases, thousands of resumes on their desks of pilots who are ready to take your job if you ever foul up.
16. Your alarm clocks (note the plural) had better work, because most companies will fire you for no more than two no-shows. That may sound normal to those non-pilots reading this, but consider that all airlines are required by law to perform background checks including criminal, residential, employment, and unemployment histories going back ten years. Interviewers with this information will not hire an applicant with an attendance-related termination on his record. There are no second chances. This pilot's career is over and he has to find a new field. Thats a huge investment of time and money up in smoke for an honest mistake.
17. If the pilot screws up, the pilot dies. If maintenance screws up, the pilot dies. If air traffic control screws up, the pilot dies. If the airplane manufacturer screws up, the pilot dies... Would you be willing to die for a lousy 20k/year?
18. There are always some rich-kids who are willing to pay airlines to hire and train them. You heard me, they pay to work. This may seem harmless to the rest of us with families to feed, but this practice only worsens the entry-level salaries and lifestyles of low-time pilots trying to establish a foothold in the industry. As pilots, we are sending the message to our employers that we will put up with anything that they wish to impose upon us just to get a shot at flying their jets. Ive heard many of my pilot colleagues say that they don't care what the salary is- they just want to fly. While I respect their love of flight, which I share with them, I cannot help but feel like they just torpedoed me and my family by being so unrealistically tolerant to the pay/lifestyle pilots are currently forced to endure. We are only as strong as our lowest bidding colleague.
19. The airline pilot has a bad stereotype of infidelity to his wife. While this stereotype stems from actual events, and is probably well deserved by the actions of our predecessors in the field, sexual encounters between crew members is not as prevalent now as it was in the past. Regardless, the stereotype lingers and demands enormous amounts of trust between pilots and their spouses. Those marriages unable to yield this trust will fail. One of my professors in college once said that you aren't a true pilot until you're married to your third wife.
20. Chapter 11. Any time an airline declares bankruptcy, its labor contracts with pilots are dissolved while it makes the pay/benefit/job cuts to get back into the black. This sends me the message that even the federal government is willing to protect the airline management while they stick it to their pilots.