Business: Third-Man Theme

For U.S. airlines entering the jet age, the No. I labor fight is over the third man in the cockpit in the new jetliners. Should he be a fully qualified pilot (making from $4,800 to $22,000 a year), like the two now in the cockpit, or a special mechanic-engineer (from $4,800 to $12,000) without pilot training? Last week, as a result of the fight, Western Air Lines was in its ninth week of strike, with all 83 flights grounded and corporate losses running to $35,000 daily. The threat of similar "third-man" strikes hangs ominously over Eastern, Pan American, T.W.A. and American Airlines, whose militant pilots only postponed a strike a fortnight ago on special pleas from the National Mediation Board.

To the airlines, the demands of the pilots seem a plain case of featherbedding: the lines say they need no third pilot. But the demands have brought on a war between two unions, the Air Line Pilots Assn. (A.L.P.A.), which negotiates for the nation's 15,000 airline pilots, and the Flight Engineers' International Assn.. which speaks for 3,500 U.S. mechanic-engineers now working on big DC-7s and Super Constellations. In the pilots' attempt to oust the engineers, says Western Air Lines President Terrell C. Drinkwater. "we were selected as a guinea pig for the entire industry."

Fail Safe? Originally, said a Western spokesman, the pilots came in with 78 contract demands amounting to 2% times the company's total net profit ($2,400,000) in 1957. The demands were only window dressing for the obvious issue. When the company refused to go along with A.L.P.A.'s demands, the 263 pilots shut the line down almost completely, idling 2,103 other employees. Drinkwater defied the pilots by signing with the engineers' union, and sees no quick end to the pilots' strike.

The pilots' main argument is that the new jets must have three pilots for safety's sake. If the fuselage were damaged at high altitudes and pressurization failed, explosive decompression could knock out both pilot and copilot; to "fail safe," say the pilots, the system should have an engineer on the job who can also perform pilot's duties. The hole in this argument, say the airlines, is that any explosive decompression in the cockpit would knock out the entire crew—including a third pilot-engineer.

The pilots also argue that the new jets simplify the job of the engineer, since they have fewer dials to watch; on the other hand, flying itself has become steadily more complex, which means that the engineer, were he a pilot, might profitably take over some pilot duties such as checking navigation and monitoring radioed weather reports. Yet even this argument runs into trouble from the engineers. Their case is that the big new jets, like every plane since World War I's "Jenny," are more—not less—complex, need a highly trained mechanic-engineer. While there may be fewer engine instruments to watch, the electrical, fuel and hydraulic systems demand increasingly expert handling.