Originally Posted by bedrock

In the early 2000's places like Comair, Eagle, and Continental Express were the only civilian path to their respective majors. In the case of CE, the rug was pulled out from under us by CAL revoking flow-thru and spinning off the CE into Expressjet. ALL the pilots at the majors sold scope. ALPA heralded increasingly bad regional contracts as "landmarks that would ensure pilots have jobs". ALPA did nothing to even try and increase the QOL at the regionals. They spent money inflating giant animals to put outside airline HQs, but didn't spend a thin dime to advertise the poor pay problems of outsourcing. ALPA has a crap PR machine. Only the crash of Colgan 3407 got the public motivated to slow the race to the bottom. ALPA was totally ineffective. They could not even get known crewmwmember through--an ExpressJet FO did that, by simply refusing to be groped on the way to work. ALPA DID take credit for his efforts, though. Most of us at the regional level believe ALPA has not only failed us, but that it never really tried in the first place.