Originally Posted by
TBucket
I'm sorry, but you're going to tell me that even if they got $100 more per hour EACH, it would make them noncompetitive? Take a two-ish hour flight from EWR-ORD. You're telling me that the difference between profitable and uprofitable is $400? [EDIT: PROFANITY REMOVED]. That's a little over $5 a seat on a 76-seat RJ.. Take that raise down to something resembling the difference between your average RJ rate and what, say, united airbus crews make and it's laughable.
If $1.50 a ticket is the difference between your airline being profitable and failing, you're running it wrong. Period.
Lighten up Jack. Maybe you need to do a little detailed reading about the industry you are in. Airline profit margins are razor-thin. A few hundred dollars can easily be the difference between breaking even and losing money.
If everyone else is using outsourced labor, it would hard to make money with in-house RJ's. Of course if EVERYBODY brought them in-house then it would all work out. Pax will not refuse to fly if you raise ticket prices $5 across the board. However...a $1 increase can bump your ticket down the list on orbitz. Most people just buy the one that floats to the top.
You can also (in theory) justify money-losing RJ routes if they provide feed to lucrative mainline routes. But management will deny that of course.