Originally Posted by
robthree
I think most guys who flew RJs for too long are committed to not letting any scope go. No matter what carrot is offered.
On the other side of things when we are talking about reclaiming scope, I can't stress enough how important that is to me. Had I been hired at United to fly a RJ, instead of at a subcontractor, I'd be sitting on over a dozen years of seniority, instead of two. If my relative seniority was unchanged, if my pay at mainline flying RJs was the same as it was at a subcontractor flying RJs, if I finally got to the Guppy at the same time, I'd have been at the top of the pay scale, instead of at the bottom, which right now is about a $300,000 difference over a career.
On top of that pay difference, I'd have an extra decade of 401k match. I'd have enjoyed better medical coverage, at a lower premium. I'd have been enjoying an annual month of vacation, instead of the two weeks I've been at forever.
Management can schedule any kind of airplane on any route they want. Really. 50 seaters kind of suck to ride in, but they fly ok. My bottom line: if it says United on the ticket, the people at the controls need to be United pilots. Pay should be as high as the Union can secure. But even if it isnominally less than what express pays, it is 100% worth it to the new hire who has to sit in the seat at that rate for a decade.
You have listed several reasons why management would want to continue outsourcing the smaller aircraft, even if the pay rates are the same. When you moved to the A-320 or B-737, it was first year pay..etc.
All the maint of the RJ would be done by mainline...the flight attds mainline. Etc.
Mngmt will work hard to keep a smaller airplane off the certificate for these and other reasons. It may prove to be a futile effort as pilot supply dwindles.
Personal opinion( like noses, everyone has one): If the regionals can't crew their fleets, the legacies will let cities that can't support a larger aircraft go, or find some way to string a series of cities together between hubs, as the regionals such as North Central, Ozark etc used to do.
I do not expect to see the legacies fly anything under 100 seats, and am personally skeptical that Delta's 100 seat experiment will work out when fuel prices go up and the collapse of the more rural economies accelerates.
Also expect more pressure ( from the more ideological people in power) to open up the USA aviation market to everyone around the world and mngmnt to try to find a way to outsource all jobs...(except theirs of course)