Originally Posted by Bucking Bar

Was your contract imposed on you?

IMHO, it is your responsibility because the mainline pilot group agreed to a contract which allowed NON United pilots to perform your work. The "express" carriers are alter-ego airlines, they are a threat to your work and should not exist at all. Mainline pilot groups create and sustain the problem via the agreements they negotiate and ratify.

I don't see a great difference between United / Continental, or Northwest / Delta or Skywest, ASA / Expressjet, Republic or the others. Somehow we ALPA members are comfortable allowing management decide what "unity" means in our association. (I know I'll catch hell for writing this, but I consider our express partners to be pilots. ... period, same as guys on my list are, with the same concerns ... we all fly for our mainline brand, the difference is mostly pay and some training to operate in a different environment)

Maybe I am too old ... but what Pan Am / Ransome did, Delta / Northeast, or Northwest / Southern makes a lot more sense than this whipsaw outsourcing garbage model that defines our profession today. If we had one seniority list flying passengers within that network, indistinguishable from one another, we would not have problems like your job security (scope) concerns or punitive fees assessed from those who can least afford to subsidize mainline.