Originally Posted by
Captain Tony
All of this is mental masturbation.
Regional pilots in their specific groups are going to do what benefits them, their families, and their wallet before they will give any thought to unity. This is human nature. We saw it at Comair with multiple concessions. We saw it at Pinnacle. Now we've seen it at PSA. All this talk of unity is meaningless.
Even Kit Darby (gasp!) predicted this bloodbath we're seeing in the regionals, and its only going to get worse, as JM mentioned, because of the quickly shrinking regional pie. We indeed lost the battle sometime around 2006.
Instead of "unity" campaigns, regional pilots need to be updating their resumes, and contacts. The only thing that will stop the whipsaw is regional pilots voting with their feet, en masse. It probably won't matter anyhow, because even with these draconian concessions that line management and mainline pilots pockets, regionals are still going away. The business model of regional jets has failed. Delta is already flying mainline equipment to places like Chattanooga, TN, Augusta, GA, Montgomery AL that used to be 50 seat CRJs or even turboprops. With the 717s even more is coming. ALPA has been telling us for 10 years that they want to take it back. Now it looks like they've finally accomplished it, not through spending negotiating capitol on scope, but by making RJ flying uneconomical. Quite a brilliant strategy. I would surely hate to be a lifer are a regional right now. I bet JM is scared.
I agree somewhat but I say the majors share this also. They had a chance to stop regionals with scope or keep all flying ONLY with pilots within a specific carrier. They chose not to fight and gave up scope. The main power base resides at the majors but what power they have is shared and gets diluted among the various carriers and diluted to almost nothing at the regional level.
I don't know of regionals pilots wanting or trying to take any jobs away from mainline but boy, it sure seems like mainline pilots would love to take back any and all jobs back they feel were lost to the regionals and offer nothing in return. So if there will ever be any true unity it will need to start at the major level and not by kicking regional pilots to the curb regardless of how entitled majors may feel nor allowing majors to discriminate against regionals.