Originally Posted by
Mercyful Fate
Straw man? Are you some sort of liberal? Liberals loooove that word.
Negative!
Originally Posted by
Mercyful Fate
So, go ahead and edumacate me on the difference between a mainline route and a mainline aircraft. You know, in your terms.
I'd consider a mainline route to be a city pairing that is or once was served by mainline crews. Also, any route that is served by a CPA carrier at the request of a mainline carrier. SkyWest, Republic, Horizon, PSA... none of these companies did the market research and decided operating into BTM or CPR was a good idea. That was done by UAL/DAL/AAG/Alaska.
A mainline aircraft is just that. An aircraft operated by mainline. At present, the smallest of which seems to be the 737/319/E190/MD80 types. The moment a mainline carrier buys a new type, it's a mainline aircraft. What we have at present is a bunch of mainline routes being flown by regional pilots in aircraft operated by regionals. There's nothing preventing a mainline carrier from purchasing some E175's or CRJ's and operating them with mainline pilots.
The whole thing is just semantics, used by management to excuse the sub-standard pay and quality of life that is experienced by those working at contract carriers. The point of my earlier post was to illustrate the fact that "regionals" are nothing of the sort. Contract carriers are flying long domestic routes that are on par with their mainline counterparts. This is problematic from a compensation and career advancement point of view.