UAL letter to the ed. on RJ's......BRAVO!
This is in response to “Smaller jets land bigger role at O’Hare; United, American using more regional planes, to the dismay of passengers, city” (News, Feb. 11), by Tribune reporters Julie Johnsson and Jon Hilkevitch. Over the past 30 years, much has changed in the domestic airline industry. From deregu lation to legacy carriers going through financial restructuring, air travel has been severely altered.
The changes to the airline industry are obvious to most airline workers. But what about the average passenger? Have the changes been beneficial to him or her? Yes, air travel is more affordable.
But is the average air traveler really getting what he or she thinks he or she is paying for?
Perhaps no change impacts the flying public more than the sharp increase in regional jets in the domestic airline industry. And, when the average pas senger purchases an airline ticket, that passenger may not even realize on what airline he or she is flying.
Today, when a passenger buys a ticket on United Airlines, or, for that matter, on any of the major airlines, there is a 50 percent chance that the passenger will actually be flying on an aircraft operated by one of a group of subcontractor re gional airlines, all of which are in con stant competition with each other for the right to operate under the major airlines’ franchises at the lowest possible cost.
Many of these subcontractor agreements with the franchise carrier are fee-for departure agreements — the regional carrier only gets paid when the flight departs, placing increasing economic, not safety, pressure on the departure.
In most cases the passengers have absolutely no idea that they are actually flying on another airline. The aircraft they board are painted almost identically to that of a mainline United airplane. The staff wears almost identical uniforms to their mainline counterparts.
Two questions beg to be answered: Who are flying these aircraft and what type of training have they received? By law, the regional airlines have to meet the Federal Aviation Administration’s stand ards, but those standards are minimum standards, far exceeded by the major airlines, and even by many of the re gionals. The last six fatal airline acci dents have been of regional airliners, and regrettably, the last four were found to be due to pilot error. The most recent fatal crash, in Buffalo, N.Y., last year, was of an outsourced Continental flight operated by Colgan Airlines, a regional subcon tractor.
It is not my intention to denigrate regional airline employees, who are often just as dedicated and hard-working as the employees of the major airlines. The pilots and flight attendants who perished in the Buffalo crash were just as much victims as their passengers. They were the result of a deregulated airline system that is rushing to park airplanes, lay off experienced pilots and replace them with the lowest-cost subcontractors.
Quality training and safety costs mon ey, dollars that are at odds with the eco nomically competitive fee for departure structure that whipsaws the regional carriers against each other. Last year, United Airlines parked100 Boeing 737s and laid off nearly 1,500 pilots, one fifth of its pilot staff. Many of those laid-off pilots are pursuing other careers entirely. The same pattern is going on at the other major airlines.
Under any reasonable system of airline operation, those major airline pilots would not be laid off. Instead, they would still be employed by the major airlines as captains on domestic narrow-body air craft, giving the benefit of their experi ence to, and mentoring, young copilots.
But, under the present broken system, the regional subcontractors are scurry ing to hire minimally experienced pilots, paying them an unlivable wage due to the constant competition for the privilege to feed the major carrier, and upgrading them to the captain’s seat in as little as six months. That’s simply a recipe for disaster.
As United pilots, we pride ourselves as being among the best-trained and safest aviators in the world. We have a safety record that backs up those claims. Yet, we are witnessing the outsourcing of too many of our brothers and sisters in lieu of cheaper, less-experienced pilots.
Our flying public deserves—and de mands— better.
— Capt. Wendy Morse, chairman of the United Master Executive Council of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, Chicago