Originally Posted by
Flyby1206
Fee-For-Departure contracts discourage efficiency. As long as the plane gets from A to B the regional gets the same pay. In the future I am sure regionals will have to take on more risk, to the point where they will be responsible for the majority of costs related to the flying, and will in turn share some of the revenue generated (if any). I believe Skywest has already signed some contracts with Airtran that are to this effect.
I think the branded operations struggle for different reasons besides efficiency, mainly brand recognition and lacking the economies of scale that larger legacy carriers have.
I really hope AA/CAL can hold their ground on scope, but more importantly is to have the rest of the legacy carriers bring back that scope they have sold out. AA/CAL can only hold the line for so long before it becomes a serious competitive disadvantage trying to run MD80/737s against CRJ900s/E190s.
To solve all this airline dilemma is just to have ONE airline run in the U.S. everybody is merging or looking at merging to stop competing with one another, so us as a pilot group need to be united first, and seek after being one regulated airline, one contract for all, one national seniority list, one national payscale, it would not be perfect but the good will outweight the bad, and pilot will be again look at the job with interest....