Originally Posted by gloopy

That's better than nothing then. How much better is anyone's guess.

The key for weighing the value of that, if any, would be the legal aspect of it being binding or not in any way. Even if both leaderships agreed, there would be members who would sue under the false auspice of "ALPA merger policy" which is still fairly vague.

If wheels were put into motion and a merger (for lack of a better term) was happening, even if a staple were administratively agreed to on the front end, the incentive to sue for more than a staple would be irresistable and guaranteed.

Throw a pot of spaghetti on the wall and hope one piece sticks.

IMO the main way to do it would be to simply bring the large RJ's to mainline and start flying them ourselves, with corresponding contractual reductions or elimination of them as "permitted types". Do we still have well below market price pay tables for the E-190? That would need to be corrected or they would have a hiring crisis right now anyway. 717 parity would be required or it would be hard to attract as many "tier one" applicants.

The other way to do it, if they were serious, would be to agressively grow the bottom with "mainline" equipment while parking (and contractually reducing) large RJ's. Dusting off our parked 717's isn't enough. I'll maybe believe it when I see a large A-220-100 order, which will be never.

So far, the company has dug in to the large RJ number, wether they can staff them right now or not, as a sacred business model they would take a strike to liquidation to preserve.

By far the easiest and simplest way at this point would be to ramp up EDV hiring while making it even more linear (more "flows" and less out of order "off the streets") to somewhat further incentivise future NH's to stay. Then double down with eliminating "first year pay" and starting directly at second year pay with full line pay during training.

That would incentivise at least some who are leaving to stay and grind it out for a bit. But they don't want to do that, therefore the staffing crisis isn't bad enough. Worst case they just park some large RJ's until the next downturn. And there will be the next downturn. They'll do ANYthing to preserve their large RJ outsource model.