Originally Posted by
JungleBus
Exactly correct. Management worked long and hard to set up the current outsourcing regime the way they like it, and they're not going to let it go without a fight, economics be damned. They already tried swapping out 50 seaters for a smaller number of 76 seaters (and 717s). That failed to help much with staffing but it DID give them the carrot they needed to entice the Endeavor pilots into voting in their "cost reset."
Now they just need to figure out how to staff their cost reset regional. This new flow is round 1. It won't staff Endeavor enough to grow it, but it might buy them some time. Round 2 will be lobbying Congress for further exemptions to the 1500 hour rule under some pie-in-the-sky promise of superior extra training at 9E & assurances of super-selective DL hiring. Round 3 is going to be sponsoring flight training scholarships in exchange for 5-8 yrs of indentured servitude at 9E. Round 4 is going to be asking DALPA for scope relief on next-Gen 90 seaters once they're sufficiently proven, in exchange for retiring a larger number of CRJ-700s (yet another cost reset opportunity!). It will be sold as a further restriction of DCI when it's really just yet another lifeline keeping it afloat.
When I hear guys like tsquare* say they're not willing to spend one red cent on recapturing scope, what I really hear (and what I think management really hears) is that they're also not willing to give up one red cent of negotiating capital that comes from preserving the status quo. If throwing management another lifeline to save their outsourcing scheme can net another 3833, I'm doubtful that tsquare et al is willing to pass over an easy 3833 to ensure outsourcing dies a natural death.
If we want to see the outsourcing scheme die, it's not going to be enough to just wait for economics to take their natural course - management will keep it on life support by any means necessary, because that's the way this generation of management was raised. If we want to see it die, we're going to have to kill it. We'll need a plan, and we'll need to act decisively while the economic factors are in our favor.
*Not picking on you tsquare, it's been a common sentiment on here recently.
Agree. It is my opinion that keeping the Endeavor experiment going is paramount to airline managements total reset for outsourced flying industry wide. Delta has established a pricing structure with it's other outsourced regionals that relies on lowest cost plus some percentage, not unlike interest rates (prime plus x).
ALPA/DALPA should fight ANY provisions, schemes, strategies, master plan etc that breathes new life into outsourcing. This should be taken as seriously as Norwegian Airlines attack on our industry from a pilots perspective. And yet what do we have, a blind eye and deaf ears. All this while in another room, ALPA works with management and the FAA to facilitate yet another blow to raising the bar with some abbreviated training program geared at getting around the 1500 rule.
Two failed experiments for the price of one (50 seat RJ's bought en mass which ALPA is helping cure and "constructive engagement" that is so lopsided the counter balance got flung off years ago.