Originally Posted by flapshalfspeed

I'll keep saying it til I'm blue in the face--the regionals are a zero-sum game--there is no such thing as "raising the bar" at the regionals anymore. The legacies simply look at data tables showing performance metrics and costs for all of their feeders, and if one of them starts climbing too high, they squash the bug with bankruptcy courts and high-paid lawyers, using the legal system to reshuffle the flying around and/or re-write contracts.

IF by some miracle you changed the RLA, obtained a "common transportation system" definition for all equipment operated under the same brand name (tried that with NWA--failed!!!), and decertified ALPA at all regionals, then I might...just might...believe that "raising the bar" regional-wide was a possibility in our distant future.

Pinnacle fought 10 YEARS for a marginally improved contract, with a 99% strike vote on record and a liberal NMB, and guess what? Within a year of getting our hard-fought contract, we were in a sham bankruptcy with a concessionary contract, a 4-year FO payscale, downgrades, furloughs, and a dying airline. MANAGEMENT ALWAYS WINS.

Go to a growing regional regardless of payscales, get your TPIC, and get the heck out. If ALPA national and legacy managements wanted the regionals to be anything other than cheap second-class sharecroppers, we would be.

If we make ourselves too expensive, we necessitate ourselves out of existence. I'm really sorry to the Eagle and XJet and Republic guys--I'm glad you all stood up to management, but the horrible reality we live in with US labor laws and ALPA is that you're all going to regret it eventually. I hate it and I wish it weren't so but it just is--there's nothing to gain here unless there is change at a national level or re-written scope at the legacies.