It's tough. Addressing the collective issue of regional airlines logically, I come up with the following...


It would benefit current regional pilots if CPA flying didn't exist. We'd gain in every possible area. It would benefit current major/legacy pilots in that adding huge amounts of pilots to the bottom of the list would greatly increase relative seniority. We'd all gain in the area of collective bargaining ability and leverage. Major carriers would no longer have to waste effort and bargaining power on recapturing lost scope, and could thus devote effort to more fruitful endeavors.

There's a general feeling I get from most major carriers' pilots that moving up from a regional must be earned, not given. They had to earn it, why shouldn't we? Conversely, there's a general feeling among regional pilots that we move the same people on the same tickets as our mainline counterparts, under the same name. We provide the same transportation service you do, simply in a different airframe for less pay, and usually with less experience. How do we bridge this gap?

There is a large part of the overall capacity that is currently flown by CPA. The capacity would need to remain more or less intact. The frequency also needs to stay.... As no matter what people think, you can't replace 5 flights on a Brasilia with a single 737 and expect the same financial result. Regional airlines have already started to feel the squeeze of a pilot supply issue, some more than others. What will be interesting to see is what happens in situations where a major carrier hasn't historically played "musical airplanes" with their feed. American might be able to shovel airplanes from one company to the next to exploit the SJS flavor of the week, but a company like Alaska would find it much more difficult to staff their feed.

Ending the CPA idea would help all of us... But it would take cooperation.

Would mainline pilots tolerate having a wholly-owned regional carrier stapled to the bottom of their list, if it meant bringing all of their brand's flying in-house? Could they live with the idea that the junior airplane at a Legacy might be an RJ-200, and that a small group of pilots below them might have received a bit of a windfall?

If not... Then what is the solution? Keep fighting for scope in each new contract? That requires other sacrifices. Or is re-claiming scope simply not a priority? I don't see many other options.

All that said, management doesn't stand to gain from any of this unless staffing their feed becomes almost impossible. So it's all kind of pointless.