Originally Posted by
Mesabah
You're missing the point. How much money would it take a regional pilot to leave for American Airlines? How much money would it take you to leave Delta for American Airlines? Subtract the difference, and that is the savings for AA.
This is why management is willing to waste billions on defunct regionals like Comair, because they are saving tens of billions on mainline pilot's pay.
That's a bit of a straw man argument. Its only valid because the trappings of seniority and longevity. But were it not for those "golden handcuffs" in the first place, the issue wouldn't exist anyway. We'd all be free for all yearly contract pilots bouncing around trying to negotiate for not only pay but seat, base, work rules and everything else. It would be a disasterous experiment in good times and absolute industry catastrophy in bad times.
Even if regionals all went away tomorrow, it would still be contractually illegal for AA to hire a DL pilot at off contract pay, QOL and (essentially) seniority. And honestly, this career would be far worse off in a wild west scenario like that, even in the limited salad days we're in. After the next natural disaster/man made disaster/economic crash, and there will be those, do you really want to be on an at will contract that's coming to an end in a down cycle? No one is going to help facilitate that.