Originally Posted by
Glenn Would
The response to any asking of scope concessions needs to be this:
If outsourcing more flying truly lowers costs this drastically, why stop at X amount of seats? Why not 100 seats? Why not 200 seats? Why not just outsource all domestic lift to the lowest-bidding regional, all international long-haul lift to the lowest-bidding Star Alliance/OneWorld/SkyTeam carrier, all of who’s contracts become exportable every 5 years. Explain to me why not.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Ever wonder why UAL had subbed out the flying to Aerlingus out of Dulles? The ultimate goal was to lower the cost of a pilot (ie pilot labor costs) across trans-atlantic routes. If they can get pilots to fly for shamrocks across the pond then they can lower the price of pilots, and therefore lower their networth, and therefore reduce their bargaining power. The two main costs of an airline are labor and fuel. They want to manage, lower, and predict their large costs to the extent possible. If airline X lowers labor costs across specific routes then airlines Y and Z will face pressure to do so as well.
One of the big reasons for the UAL-CAL merger was to abrogate scope of CAL pilots. UAL assumed the Aerlingus wetlease program would continue and hoped that it would expand. IMHO, the negotiators did a good job at holding the line there and good on them for giving the Aerlingus pilots the boot off of our metal.