Originally Posted by
Vsop
No, I’m not advocating that NB are required to do crossings instead of WB. Sorry, if my rambling came accurate that way.
I’m looking for protections against partner carriers swapping their current WB hours for NB and increasing frequency to cover the lost ASMs. Under this TA a partner doing this would lower their WB hours and thus lower our required WB hours since it’s set as a ratio.
This scope agreement has no protections for that, and that is the direction the industry is going. Smaller aircraft on higher frequencies for international. That’s how 787/350 killed off the 747/380, and that’s the sales pitch from Airbus for the 321LR and XLR models.
My thought above was trying to say this agreement at least needs to have a requirement that we have 1:1 growth in this type of flying. Better for us would be all partner long haul hours must equal our WB hours, but I’m more realistic than to expect that.
I see your point and your concern. It sounds like you’re worried the XLR will be the new “international RJ” sacrificing payload for frequencies, and the new global scope doesn’t guarantee we would fly our share of international RJs where in the old scope language there was at least some protection with EASKs.
My opinion is the 321NEO or XLR will likely fly some of the shortest transatlantic flights. I am a skeptic that a partner airline will achieve a saturation level where it decimates our global flying, particularly of the trade offs they would need to make to achieve the deep Europe range. The MD11 barely made Japan, the 73N doesn’t do Hawaii well, the C-Series only barely can do LCY to NY.
Even if I’m wrong, does the new scope protection protect us better or worse against all the threats we face over the next 10 years vs current book? And if we kept current book, would the remedy for continued infractions with an XLR pay enough to offset the potential WB penalties paid under the new scope agreement? I can let the XLR threat “soak” a contract cycle and revisit. The wide body penalties in the agreement in front of us I want yesterday.