Success for airlines utimately has nothing to do with employees terms and conditions. It has everything to do with the quality of the airline management team. The US provides the best example of this. Of the 7 major airlines in the US, I think iit is generally recognized that SouthWest represents the most successfull US major, as it has remaind profitable over the last 5 airline boom/bust cycles. However it has the best paid narrow body pilots of any US and all pilots are represented by a union. Why has it succeeded when all the others have failed, since the secret to success is supposed to be lowering employee costs ? I think it is because it has always had a stable long term mangement team with a strong operational background and a long term view. The easiest thing for management to do is to cut terms and conditions, the real heavy lifting in management is to get the big things consistantly right. I think it is fascinating that if you rank the US airlines by conventional business metrics (ROI, RPSM,CPSM etc) you get the following order (most successfull to least successfull)
SW-Continental-Alaska-AA-DELTA-United-US Airways
However if you rank them by average pilot wages you get (highest average wages to lowest)
SW-Alaska-Contiental-AA-Delta-United-US Airways
If you rank them by management stability you get (least turn over to most turnover in managment ranks)
SW-Continental-Alaska-AA-Delta-United-US Airways
Seems to me that the successful airlines have stable mangement and understand that a fair deal for their employees will ultimately make for happier customers and unsuccessful airlines have lots of management churn which encourages short term thinking with an emphasis on quick hits like poor T & C's for their crews and a plethora of nusance charges which makes for unhappy customers and ultimately another trip through chapter 11. US Airways is the poster child for how not to run an airline and yet it has the lowest wage structure in the business....So much for the theory of "Smart Markets"
