Captains Capricious

U.S. airline pilots have a union that actually delivers pie in the sky. The 31,000 members of the Air Line Pilots Association earn an average of $33,250 a year--it goes up to $59,000 for some captains on transatlantic runs--for working 60 to 85 hours a month. No less generous with themselves, ALPA captains collect flight pay of around $40 per hour for time that they spend on association business; last year union officers managed to spend $1,100,000 on "meals, travel and lodging." Their power matches their pay. The union can put out of business any airline that it chooses to strike.

Since Nov. 12, ALPA has been on strike against Mohawk Airlines of Utica, N.Y., grounding the line's short-haul flights to 38 mainly Northern and Eastern airports. Money is only one of the issues. Mohawk has offered to pay its captains--who now average $2,625 per month--a monthly wage of $2,985 by 1972. The union wants an average $3,100 per month immediately, to bring the pay of Mohawk pilots up to the scale paid by larger trunk lines. Beyond that, ALPA insists that Mohawk meet no fewer than 80 demands--from shorter hours to a ban on training flights between midnight and 6 a.m.--that would give the pilots far and away their best contract with any of the nation's nine regional airlines. The stickiest issue for Mohawk is ALPA's demand of veto power over any transfer of money-losing routes to air taxis or commuter lines--a decision traditionally left to management. Says Bill Crimson, the union's chief negotiator: "Management is saying more and more that we are negotiating in areas of management prerogative. My reply is yes, we are."

Competition from Cars. Mohawk has lost money every year since 1966 and showed a deficit of $3,600,000 in the first ten months of 1970. The line has been particularly hurt by recession. Cost-conscious companies have discouraged air travel on business and, says Mohawk President Russell V. Stephenson, "our routes are short enough that nowadays we find ourselves in direct competition with the telephone and the highways."

Mohawk has sought to cope by trimming its schedules and turning over lightly traveled routes to the largely nonunionized air taxi lines, the so-called "third-level carriers." The union is worried about the trend, and estimates, perhaps with some exaggeration, that 1,000 ALPA jobs have been lost through such transfers. But as Piedmont Airlines President Tom Davis puts it, "ALPA itself is responsible for pricing us out of the small-town market. We can't afford to take those crews in those jets into the smaller towns, so we are turning them over to the third-level carriers. Now they don't want to let us do that."

If the issue is not settled soon, Mohawk could go out of business. Last week the line announced that it would seek to "restructure" its debts and obtain "modifications" of some $3,000,000 in various interest and note payments due in January. It has already deferred a Dec. 1 interest payment on a note of $10 million. "We'll make it," says Mohawk's Stephenson, who has taken a 75% salary cut --to $15,000 a year--for the duration. "We won't go under." Yet the two sides are so far apart that no one expects an early return to work. More than most union men, the pilots have been in a position to sock savings away for a long, cold winter.

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