Being a pilot just isn't what it used to be By Marilyn Adams, USA TODAY By Anne Ryan, USA TODAY After Sept. 11, United Airlines pilot Mike Hamilton had to "bump down" to the smaller 757 and take a pay cut. Few people symbolize power like an airline pilot. The commander of the ship. The final authority in the air. The person in whose hands 300,000 pounds of metal, people and fuel can somehow lift off a runway and soar. But today, pilots who have trained all their lives to keep everything under control find that little about their world is in their grasp. Nearly 8,300 of the nation's 95,000 pilots are furloughed, and that number is bound to rise. Pilots at United Airlines and US Airways, both in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, are taking pay cuts of 30%, 40% or more, and other airlines are expected to follow. Furloughed pilots lucky enough to get hired by a discount airline, cargo carrier or start-up face pay cuts of tens of thousands of dollars a year. Retired and retiring pilots who expected six-figure pensions fear they now might not get enough to live on. Then there's the unspoken anxiety about things more ominous than mechanical problems or storms. Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, many airline pilots work behind bulletproof cockpit doors and undergo intensive airport security checks that make some feel like criminals. Soon they may be asked to carry guns in case they have to repel terrorists. "Pilots need to do what's necessary to help the company," says United 1st Officer Mike Hamilton, who has taken two pay cuts in the past 18 months that reduced his income 40%, or $70,000. "The frustrating part is the company keeps asking for more. You don't know what's coming around the corner." Hamilton, 31, who has two young sons and a stay-at-home wife, flew Boeing 777s from Chicago's O'Hare airport until the terrorist attacks. Soon afterward, when United had to park some planes to cut costs, Hamilton was "bumped" out of the 777 by seniority rules. He moved down in aircraft size and salary to the smaller Boeing 757 because a pilot who had worked for United longer bid for his job. Then, when United filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December, the pilots union agreed to an immediate 29% across-the-board pay cut to help the carrier, costing Hamilton again. If nothing else goes wrong, he could still gross $100,000 this year. But if the United States attacks Iraq, United employees are almost certain to be hit with more pay cuts and furloughs. And, as the airline restructures, he could get bumped down again. He has refinanced his house and stopped family vacations, and his wife, Mary, a former event planner, is considering returning to work. He knows it could be worse. "There are guys who are out altogether," he says. From pilot to wedding planner Furloughed pilot Bill Sigler is one of those guys. After flying along the East Coast for US Airways for three years, Sigler, a 35-year-old first officer, was laid off in January 2002. With US Airways in bankruptcy court and thousands of pilots laid off industrywide, he says he doubts he'll ever go back. Sigler, who earned about $96,000 a year at US Airways, considered applying to the biggest airline still hiring, discount giant Southwest Airlines. Even if he could get hired, he says, he would make about a third of what he was earning at US Airways. Because of the airline industry's strict seniority system, Sigler would have to start at the bottom of a new airline's pay and seniority scale, despite years of experience. So these days, Sigler helps his wife, Jodie, with a wedding planning business she started after his furlough. The business could gross about $40,000 this year. On the side, he does commercial landscaping for clients near his home in Pembroke Pines, Fla. The family fired their nanny and stopped dining out and taking vacations. They expect a second child in June. "I would like to go back to flying, but I know there's not much chance for the next few years," he says. Sigler's friend, fellow 737 pilot Lou Gavin, has 19 years' seniority at US Airways and is still working, flying as many as five or six trips a day. He has taken a 33% pay cut, and the airline has asked for an additional 5% if there's war in Iraq. But Gavin is looking ahead, wondering whether the company will even survive to fund his pension when he retires in 12 years. Before the Chapter 11 filing, Gavin was eligible for a $96,000-a-year pension. If the bankruptcy court judge lets US Airways jettison the pilots' pension plan as it has proposed, Gavin would get only $29,000 a year from a quasi-government-run fund that insures private pensions. The judge has asked a mediator to settle the matter. "In my mind, this is the toughest time" pilots have ever faced, says Capt. Duane Woerth, president of the national Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 63,000 pilots nationwide. "We've never as an industry had so many problems across the board. The joy of flying that brought so many people to an aviation career is becoming so much hassle." At United, Capt. Herb Hunter, a union spokesman, estimates that furloughs and aircraft retirements have forced a third to half of the 9,500 working pilots to change aircraft models, move their families to a different city or start commuting to another city. "It's emotional turmoil, but we don't have any choice but to get through it," he says. Hunter, who has worked at United for 24 years, was flying 777s from Miami to Argentina and Brazil until United cut costs by switching those routes recently to a smaller plane. Hunter was faced with changing planes and taking a second pay cut, moving to Chicago to continue flying 777s internationally, or commuting to Chicago for every trip. He chose to commute, going up the day before on a United flight. Pilots' salaries and pensions aren't the only things under attack. CEOs of money-losing major airlines have called on Congress to rewrite federal law so that airline employees can't strike for better contracts. A communities' coalition funded by the airlines' trade group also wants the law changed, saying airline workers' right to strike threatens air service to cities. These groups want an arbitrator to make final decisions on contract disputes. Some costly "work rules" are also being squeezed out of pilots' labor contracts. One example: How sick time is paid. At the biggest airlines, pilots who call in sick on the first day of a three-day trip get paid for the whole trip whether they are sick three days or not. If a trip happens to fall during a scheduled vacation, a pilot at some airlines can get paid for the trip even though it was never flown. "The big carriers have incredibly archaic work rules," says Randy Babbitt, a former Eastern Airlines pilot who's now president of Eclat Consulting, which advises airlines and unions. "A lot of these rules came from the 1950s and '60s, when the airlines were regulated" and fares were set by the government, almost guaranteeing profits. One pilot calling in one sick day and getting paid for three may not seem like much. "But if an airline has 10,000 pilots like American or United, and each one calls in sick once a year, that's a lot of money," Babbitt says. Some experts think highly paid pilots are themselves partly to blame for today's wrenching adjustment because during the boom years, unions demanded hefty raises knowing airlines feared a strike. But those recent raises followed the lean early '90s after the first Gulf War, when airlines were failing and furloughing and many workers' paychecks were frozen or cut. Though this industry is cyclical, no one foresaw the huge drop in demand and revenue wrought by the combined blows of Sept. 11, recession, competition and security hassles. A not-so-glamorous life Babbitt says the stereotype persists that most pilots earn close to $300,000, travel to glamorous destinations and work two weeks a month. "That icon we're talking about is a very small percentage of the total," Babbitt says. Only the most experienced pilots flying the largest planes on international routes have lives resembling that. "Everyone thinks you are laying over (between trips) in Acapulco," he says. "The reality is you are laying over in Gary, Ind., in a Holiday Inn." Allegheny Airlines pilot Bruce Freedman knows that life well. Freedman, 48, has worked for the US Airways Express regional carrier for 20 years, flying turboprops to small and midsize cities like Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y., and Burlington, Vt. "People think we're making $250,000 a year and we're off half the month, but people here make $40,000 to $60,000," he says. "People at the regional airlines are actually everyday people." Between cuts in pay and benefits, Freedman says, he's lost 15% of his compensation. And pilots there worry how Allegheny, which flies only turboprops, fits into a reorganized airline built around regional jets. US Airways plans to phase out prop planes by 2008. There are few options when furloughs come. Few of the big jet airlines are hiring; most have pilots of their own on furlough and may lay off more. Only a handful of passenger carriers, like America West and Southwest, are hiring, as are a few regional carriers, such as SkyWest. Furloughed pilots from US Airways and Continental are being offered jobs flying smaller planes for smaller wages at regional-airline subsidiaries. The big-jet carriers that are hiring are mainly discounters whose pay scales fall well below Delta's, for example, and which don't offer advancement to wide-body planes or international routes. AIR Inc., a pilot career service, says fewer than 5,900 pilots got airline jobs last year, less than a third of the number in 2000. As the bankruptcy cases at United and US Airways slog on, slashing pilots' paychecks and changing their lives, pilots at American, Delta, Northwest and other troubled carriers are watching. Their time is coming. American is negotiating pay cuts with its unions, saying it soon may be in Chapter 11, too. "I'm worried about my family, about furloughs and pay cuts," says American pilot Greg Hudson, 33, who flies from Miami to the Caribbean and Central America. Hudson, an ex-Marine who fought in Kuwait, has worked much of his life to get where he is: pumping jet fuel to pay for lessons and flying aging cargo planes to build experience. "We all know it's coming, and we're trying to mentally prepare ourselves," he says of the changes. "I love being up in the sky, the view out the front window at 30,000 feet. I don't want to lose it." *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.thehummingbirdonline.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************