You are right, it will never be higher so long as we act as subcontractors. ExpressJet has the idea with their branded flying. Your compensation is now tied to your corporate performance. With contracts, your compensation is tied to the negotiated value of the contract.

What I'm saying is that either the legacies need to maintain their foothold and grow (I would venture to say that their management and labor groups are too entrenched to be creative though) or the big "regionals" need to stand on their own brand.

What I'm suggesting is effectively the death of mainline carriers. Unfortunately, just the like auto industry, the union pay scales can get out of hand at the top. When you are paying guys over $250k a year to work less than a week each month, you simply are not getting much bang for you buck. I certainly would love that job, but its not realistic in our global market.

What I advocate for long term pay in this new paradigm is to bring the bottom up and the top down to create a more balance pay structure over a career. This will not happen at the mainline routes due to the unions focusing on the top 1/3. Management will never agree to a $20/hr pay raise across the board and the union will never agree to a $20/hr pay raise for the FOs only.

I see the problem really being that what we call a regional isn't a regional anymore. Its domestic outsourcing. If the subcontractor can do the job better than the prime, sooner or later, the prime gets hosed.