mwa1

the percentage of flights and the percentage of seats are two different things.
figures lie and liars figure.

Flyby1206

Fee-For-Departure contracts discourage efficiency. As long as the plane gets from A to B the regional gets the same pay. In the future I am sure regionals will have to take on more risk, to the point where they will be responsible for the majority of costs related to the flying, and will in turn share some of the revenue generated (if any). I believe Skywest has already signed some contracts with Airtran that are to this effect.

I think the branded operations struggle for different reasons besides efficiency, mainly brand recognition and lacking the economies of scale that larger legacy carriers have.

I really hope AA/CAL can hold their ground on scope, but more importantly is to have the rest of the legacy carriers bring back that scope they have sold out. AA/CAL can only hold the line for so long before it becomes a serious competitive disadvantage trying to run MD80/737s against CRJ900s/E190s.

Phrog Phlyer

APA lost it. Furloughed pilots were counted toward total employed pilots. Part of the reason they lost, maybe the main reason, was they demanded an answer from the arbitrator within the 30 day window. The arbitrator delivered their answer on schedule.

Phrog Phlyer

True. The only really reliable figure is to follow the money. The company loves making money and will do whatever they think will make them the most money. Sometimes they make mistakes, but everything they do is geared towards profit.

Flyby1206

deleted...

yancharlie

To solve all this airline dilemma is just to have ONE airline run in the U.S. everybody is merging or looking at merging to stop competing with one another, so us as a pilot group need to be united first, and seek after being one regulated airline, one contract for all, one national seniority list, one national payscale, it would not be perfect but the good will outweight the bad, and pilot will be again look at the job with interest....

Mason32

This is part of the reason that wholly owned regionals are the preffered route. Example. Your flight from ORD to YYZ is delayed for mechanical. There are flights every hour doing the same run. Your return trip from YYZ to ORD is booked for 7 pax. More and more often you are seeing the wholly owned regionals cancel the original MX delayed flight, move the pax to the next YYZ flight... cancel the YYZ-ORD that was so delayed that it was within 10 minutes of another YYZ-ORD that had room for the 7 returning pax. The fuel savings from not running an empty flight, and a second flight with only 7 pax is significant.

These types of things are happening more and more with the wholly owned regional carriers, and almost never happen at the subcontractor since they have no dog in the game beyond gettign their fee for departure.

So, while it is true the wholly owned regional is a better deal for the mainline company, they need the subcontractors to avoid being held hostage as Comair did to Delta.

and when you put it all together, it means fewer mainline jobs for everybody.

mwa1

...and at AA there is a contractual limit of 7% of ASM's. hardly the end of the world.

Beagle Pilot

We should insert the word "currently" in that phrase somewhere.

A beer says it's at least 10% by 2012.

Wheels up

The decision by this arbitrator was so bizarre that even the company was shocked. The arbitrator completely disregarded the clear intent of the stipulation and tortured and parsed the word "employed." According to this idiot, the company could furlough every single AA pilot and not trigger the floor. While arbitrators decisions are normally pretty unchangeable, this decision is so crazy that it's being taken to court.

With regards to AE, AMR knows that the 50 seaters are essentially obsolete. In their openers to the pilot contract, they're demanding 1 for 1 replacement of 50 seaters with 70 seat class airplanes. Strangely, however, no mention of 100 seat class airplanes at all. AE is economically dead unless they can break the APA, like UAL and DAL have broken ALPA, which is exactly what they're trying to do. As usual, AA so-called management is in deep buffet and out of ideas and altitude. They've got three contracts up right now and all three unions are livid.