[QUOTE= Do you folks have any idea how small of a percentage labor costs are in the grand scheme?[/QUOTE]

Labor is the only controlable cost at an airline. Fuel, maintenance, training, landing fees etc are pretty much the same whichever airline it is.

Now if you have 10 captains on $60,000 a year (G7 for example) and 10 captains on $100,000 a year (Skywest for example) thats a difference of $400,000 for only 10 pilots. $4 million for 100 pilots. Once you get into big numbers like the 3,000 pilots (Eagle for example) you are talking huge sums of money.

AA, Delta, United, U.S Airways, don't really care who flies their feed. They just look at the numbers, and so the whip saw, concessions and under bidding begins.