Pilot Payroll

[cmdrnmartin]

Issue: Pay For Pilots

Current Implementation: Percentage of each flight.

New Proposal: I was brainstorming last night, to try to figure out how to implement a flight requirement for your VA's members, and I came across this idea.

Have an option under "Personnel Management" or some such thing, where you can set the payroll for each of your members. Instead of a percentage, you type in their yearly salary, and then flynet divides that number by 365, and pays out that amount each day, from your airlines funds. Each pilot's salary would be set by the CEO, so newer members could theoretically be paid less than other more senior members. To prevent inactive pilots from bleeding you dry, there would be a 'inactive' counter, so that after a certain number of days without a flight, your VA stops paying out money to the pilots who arnt doing anything. The time limit could be set by the VA, so that each VA could enforce its' own limit.

All of this would be accessible on the Personnel Page, where a CEO could at a glance, see how many flights the pilot has done in the past 30 days, the Yearly salary, the by day breakdown, total days working for your airline (to help determine seniority, these would only be the days that the pilot was actually payed for) and how many days its been since a pilot last flew.

This would allow airlines to set custom payrolls, manage their resources, and encourage pilots to fly for a VA, to maintain their flight pay.

Comments?

[FsNovice]

Whilst i think that idea is great, i'm wondering(hint: i'm not sure, i'm not a real world pilot) is it realistic. I think it should be implemented when possible. I like it, nice brainstorming.

[dgor]

Sounds like a good idea to me Justin. Very good idea indeed.

[joefremont]

If you are trying to figure out if a flight is profitable, pilot salary is certianly a major factor. With you proposal, a flight would be much more profitable if the pilot flys 28 flights a week rather than just two flights a week. This might be realistic if it were the airline that made that descision but instead its the pilot that decides when they want to fly. On the other hand its not that realistic that the pilots pay depends on how many pax the flight carries, real world pilots get paid the same amount if the flight is empty or full. How about having a fixed pay amount on each flight plus a pay scale factor for each pilot that the CEO can set based on seniority.

Possibly the pilot could have a reputation factor that works the same as the airlines reputation factor and that could be used as the pay scale factor.

[cmdrnmartin]

If you are trying to figure out if a flight is profitable, pilot salary is certianly a major factor. With you proposal, a flight would be much more profitable if the pilot flys 28 flights a week rather than just two flights a week. This might be realistic if it were the airline that made that descision but instead its the pilot that decides when they want to fly. On the other hand its not that realistic that the pilots pay depends on how many pax the flight carries, real world pilots get paid the same amount if the flight is empty or full. How about having a fixed pay amount on each flight plus a pay scale factor for each pilot that the CEO can set based on seniority.

Possibly the pilot could have a reputation factor that works the same as the airlines reputation factor and that could be used as the pay scale factor.

Actually, the flights wont be affected by pilot pay at all anymore. The pilots pay comes out of your airlines budget, not out of the flight income.

This change makes the pilots pay completely independant from flights, they make money daily, regardless of whether they fly that day. To make sure that in active pilots dont waste your money, you decide how long they can go in your airline without flying before they lose that daily income.

Say theirs two pilots, me and Q, and we work for Moneyair!

Moneyair has said that you must fly once every 5 days to be eligible to be payed. I make 365$ a year (this is of course just to simplify the math) and Q with a higher seniority (the airline CEO felt like it) makes 730$ a year.

We both fly on Day 1. We make no money personnally from the flight, but the flights make a little money for the company, say 1500$ in total. At the end of Day 1, the airline pays us, 1$ to me, and 2$ to Q (since he makes double what i do annually). This money is taken from the airline budget, not the flight income.

Days 2-4 Neither of us flies, but we both continue making money. I make 3, Q makes 6.
Day 5, I fly, Q does not. I make my dollar for the day, but the payroll system, detecting that Q has gone over the time limit of fivedays without a flight, gets his payroll cut (ie he does not make 2$, he gets nothing)

Day 6, Q and I both fly, Qs pay gets reinstated.

Now obviously, you'll be paying your pilots 6 figure salaries most likely a year, and you dont want to pay for someone who is doing nothing, so that user-adjustable time cutoff option makes this plan feasible. No money should be given to a pilot for a flight, they should be paid if they are consistently flying...

I hope that clarifies this proposal.

[BigQ]

seconded.

[DoubleDutch]

Not that I have any pilots I could pay as of yet, but I still think that this is a rather decent idea that came out of your head.

Bout time something useful came from there...

[Matthew]

I like it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and i back it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Also, i think if this idea goes ahead. New pilots that join flynet (students) should start with no money in there account!. They have to go to work for it

[joefremont]

I understand your idea but would rather pay on a per flight basis to encourage productivity. If you wanted to do weekly salary I would say you need to do some number of flight hours a week to stay current (say 20), if you work less than that you get less. Real world pilots would get a salary but would be assigned a list of flights that they must fly or else.

Edit: Maybe a per hour rate would be simpler.

[cmdrnmartin]

Ah, but you see Joe, you can set it so that if your pilots dont fly often enough for your tastes, they dont get payed... I'd call that incentive

And Double Dutch! Your back on the forums! Now I must destroy you....

[tall_guy_pete]

I'd be for this all the way!

Great inovatoin there Justin!

[Quantum]

My tuppence-worth.

Keep it simple. It's simple now and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There is incentive enough now to encourage pilots to fly - the more they fly, the more they earn. The pay per pax load is to a certain extent realistic. A pilot who flies a CRJ type aircraft usually gets paid less than a pilot who flies and A340 for example. There is of course also the incentive for pilots to manage their fuel pick-ups more efficiently - the greater the flight revenue, the higher they get paid.

I regard all pilots in CBFS VA as equal and have no desire to create 'levels' of pay. The more a pilot flies and the larger capacity aircraft they fly, the greater their reward, I do not begrudge them that and the pilots pay is not a 'crippling' factor from a finance point of view.

Rgds

John

[tall_guy_pete]

I wouldn't agree with you their John ... how come classic british aren't a part of the aliance btw? Just out of curiosity

[CAPFlyer]

Justin,

While I congratulate you for spending so much time on this idea, I have to agree with John here. Within the framework of FlyNET, without creating a *LOT* of rules, it's going to be impossible to have any pay system other than what's in place now that is anything close to reality.

Real pilots are paid one of two ways - hours or miles. You have a certain garunteed pay as long as you're "available" to fly a certain number of days out of the month, regardless of if you fly that much or not. If you go over the garuntee, you get paid the difference of course, but if you fall short, as long as you didn't call in sick a lot or just do what we call "marking off" which is where you declare yourself unavailable and don't get paid, you get your garuntee.

Now, if we want to impliment this in FlyNET, how do we determine an acceptable number of days to be available to get paid? How do we not penalize those pilots who don't fly a lot due to real-world commitments while still keeping those who fly a lot interested? It's very hard to do. Paying a percentage of the revenue is more realistic for our environment. It's one place where we should deviate from reality in the interest of simplicity and appealing to the largest number of pilots and VA's possible.

[BigQ]

(Altered quotation)

1.Now, if we want to impliment this in FlyNET, how do we determine an acceptable number of days to be available to get paid?
2. How do we not penalize those pilots who don't fly a lot due to real-world commitments while still keeping those who fly a lot interested?

1. Many VA's ask from their pilots to fly certain number of hours per month. Thus, the CEO decides the number of days to be "available" - in this case flying. Implementation of 2 improvements into 1!!!

2. We make it a realistic number, not 30 days/month! And if the pilot flies over the limit one month, then it can automatically adjust the next month's value! If he/she flies under the limit, the rest is added to the next month! because we all know that not all months of the year are the same for everyone!

Maybe it could be decided in hours, like a minimum of 30 hours per months. That can be determined using the average hours a pilot flies, and at the pilots/ceo discretion... or the VA could choose between measuring in days or hours...