NavList:

Greg-
> Au contraire, as the holder of an FAA commercial pilot certificate

There's no contraire there, you missed my point yet, still, and again<G>. You,
as a licensed pilot, are not the airline industry. You are an employee of it and
these days, more fungible, a "tool" like any other piece the business buys rents
or hires. You are *not* what I am referring to as the airline industry. And
judging from pilot salary cuts versus top management gold, you're not a
particularly valued employee any more. (Sad to say.)

If you ask a gate worker, a ticket agent, any non-front-seat employee of any US
airline (Delta, American, Southwest, TWA [sic], Continental) how many miles it
is from here to there, they answer in statute miles. Ask them how many air miles
they award the traveler--the customer--and it is statute miles. Ask them how
fast the plane goes, and they answer in statute mph. And the ones I've spoken
with, when they will speak at all (you never know, I might be a terrorist who's
just kept the same address and phone number for decades awaiting my activation)
mention flight times and cruising speed based on numbers like 500mph. Not knots.

Heck, most of the cabin "attendants" will shoot you a blank stare if you use the
words port and starboard, they *know* an airplane has a right side and a left
side.

Even if you are a stockholder in your airline, you are not "the airline
industry" unless you are a majorty owner or other policy maker. You're a pilot,
which is something radically different. You can't tell me that ANY airline would
be run the same way that it is being run today, if the pilots made the rules.
Not for long, anyway.<G> (But then again, piloting skills and business
management skills, are not necessarily the exact same skill set. Which is part
of the original topic I suppose, captain's skills versus masters and owners.)

Used to be, if the last flight out was running late and the pilot wanted to get
home he could firewall the throttles and no one would challenge that. Now, I'm
told that pilots on some airlines get a formal reprimand for consuming too much
fuel--regardless of how late they were running. Can you give me a reality check
on how your employer, or others, are handling that?

Or, why aircraft emergency exits in the EU are required to be thrown OUT while
in the US, different airlines flying the same aircarft require them to be
brought IN, where they obstruct an exit row? (In the US, that's an airline
industry standard, not an FAA or aircraft manufacturer issue, according to the
FAA and a Boeing rep.) Someone at Boeing, and another 737 trans-pacific pilot,
both told me they suspect the US airlines bring the doors in because it costs
too much to replace them after they've bounced on the ground.

Bean counters. Like they said and still say at NASA, remember, you're flying in
an aircraft with one million different parts, each supplied by the lowest
bidder. I don't think pilots run things that way.


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