Originally Posted by JungleBus

Sure, here's the short & sweet version.

Pinnacle's bankruptcy, purchase by DL, and the ALPA/DALPA-engineered Delta-jobs-for-concessions deal set off a concessionary round of bargaining in the regional sector. Around the time Richard started bragging that he had "reset" DCI's costs, American Eagle management approached their pilots - less than a year into their own bankruptcy-forced 8-year contract - and demanded that they adopt a B-scale that would freeze pay for newhires. The American Eagle MEC turned it down. Moak wrote a letter to the Eagle pilots that was widely interpreted as disapproval over the MEC turning down the proposal.

American Airlines Group, having secured a bunch more 76-seat outsourcing in BK, was looking for a place to put those jets, so they approached Pacific Southeast Airlines (PSA). PSA management in turn went to their MEC and negotiated a concessions-for-jets deal, which the pilots ratified to the tune of nearly 80%. PSA was awarded 30 CRJ-900s shortly thereafter.

Eagle management went back to their MEC at that point and openly threatened to "Comair" them if they couldn't get concessions. After some debate the MEC voted to negotiate, and eventually narrowly approved an "Agreement in Principle" that called for a 10-year contract with frozen pay the entire time, a slightly enhanced flow-through, and minimum fleet guarantees that were still smaller than their current fleet. The NC set about drafting the specific language.

Meanwhile ExpressJet and ASA - now merged into ExpressJet - were still without a joint contract after a couple years of slow negotiations. The new developments at PSA and Eagle broke the logjam in management's favor, and the MEC approved a joint contract that was rather concessionary on the promise of new AA flying. The pilot group rejected it, 87% against. The MEC resigned. There was an outpouring of anti-ALPA sentiment on the forums. Moak abruptly changed his tune on concessions and started talking up the Fee For Departure group at ALPA, which has been around for years but hasn't done much. PSA refused to participate in the reactivated FFD group.

Meanwhile one of the Eagle MEC reps had been recalled and the anti-concession faction of the MEC was able to bring a few other members over to their views. When the T/A language was drafted, the MEC ended up voting it down 5-4. It was a close-run thing with the deciding vote switching the night before. AE management immediately started suggesting that the MEC was illegitimate and wasn't representing the pilots' wishes, and there was intense pressure from ALPA to allow the pilots to vote. An EVP wrote a letter suggesting the MEC was opening themselves to legal action. Eventually the MEC revoted with 3 voting to send the T/A to pilot ratification and 6 abstaining, thus allowing the vote while demonstrating against it.

While this was going on at Eagle, Republic Airways came to a T/A after 7+ years of stalled negotiations and an extremely outdated contract that was making it hard for them to attract pilots. There was some cloak-and-dagger stuff with the Teamsters Airline Division bypassing the RAH ExCo (ie MEC) and negotiating committee. Still the ExCo sent it to MemRat. That vote was going on concurrently with the Eagle vote.

American Eagle pilots rejected their concessionary T/A with 70% against. Eagle management is now saying they'll shrink the airline to nothing over time, but it's very unclear if there are any regionals that could actually take over any of their flying and be able to staff it.

RAH pilots just voted against their T/A, which did contain some improvements over their decade-old current contract but was generally quite underwhelming and had some really bad scheduling language, with 85% against.

XJT, AE, and RAH contain roughly half of the pilots in the regional industry.

I've never heard as much anti-ALPA talk on the line as the last 3 months or so. It's widely believed that ALPA national was supporting concessions at the regionals, with national officers insisting it was just the regionals' time for concessions. It's my own belief that if Moak isn't kicked out this year and a reform-minded president elected, ALPA will be done as a going concern within a few years. They're poisoning the well with the next generation of mainline pilots. It should be pointed out that APA strongly supported American Eagle pilots' stand and encouraged their members to help AE pilots.

That's the situation in a nutshell. Basically regional pilots have noticed a lot of chickens coming home to roost vis a vis the pilot shortage, and decided the time was right to take a stand.