Originally Posted by
BeatNavy
The codeshares themselves aren’t that profitable, but the pax getting into our network become profitable when they connect on us. Using the ALK example, if we throw a bunch of people into codeshares on the west coast and make money off them when they board a connecting JetBlue plane, the company makes money. Great. A JetBlue pilot flies that pax at some point. Great. What’s not great is now the company has less reason to try to expand organically in those markets. They are already getting connections from those markets on a HZ/SKW/ALK plane.
How do you imagine we will lose flying without codeshares I’m speaking about? We don’t currently have those codeshares. The codeshares we have are on routes/equipment we don’t/can’t feasibly fly. BOS-ACK? Don’t care about that piston flying. Intl connections we can’t fly ourselves? Don’t care, until we have the capability to fly it ourselves. FLL-JAX I believe is what N8 used as a silver example...but I can’t seem to find any FLL-JAX direct flights on silver, so I dunno if that’s via a 2 leg silver flight. Regardless, if silver connects our pax elsewhere that we don’t fly...that’s fine.
What I do care about is codeshares we don’t have yet, eg Alaska. Alaska connecting all our pax to intra-cali and other west coast flying we just can’t seem to get right. The good part about it is it could add more pax to our network. The bad part: that limits our need to grow in there on our own. My whole point is codeshares are fine for places we can’t fly ourselves. But for places we can fly ourselves, we should do it ourselves. And we should put limits on existing codeshares for places which we become capable of flying (HNL, or wherever). But this TA leaves domestic codeshares wide open. I just see ALK/Moxy codeshares growing faster than our own organic growth under those agreements. If we had solid growth I wouldn’t be as concerned. But clearly our west coast strategy is failing, our block hour growth is anemic, and the provisions and protections in codesharing are pretty slim.
If the company “wouldn’t codeshare out that much flying” as you state, why wouldn’t they let us limit it in the TA or allow more strict codeshare controls? Clearly they want it for a reason. If they didn’t want to expand our codeshares, they would have allowed us to codify what we have now and just codeshare on routes we can’t feasibly fly, domestically and internationally. And to your point about more specifics adding up to be thousands of pages long, this language I want could exist in the same space that exists now, with different wording.
When has a company not tried to limit everything a pilot group has asked for? Why would they let us eliminate it completely? We state our desire, they state their limits. Negotiations.
My point about the length of a 100% restrictive contract is that its not possible. We negotiate to a point where we feel we get enough restriction or at least some restriction and then we move on to the other parts of Scope like FFD/M&A etc. Could we have stipulated more of a growth number? Sure. As well we could have gotten pay higher/benefits and profit sharing. I am okay with the section including the Codesharing language.
I see why you want elimination of codeshares just like SWA, but do you want their work rules. At some point you have to accept the give and take of the process.
In respect BN.