Originally Posted by Flyby1206
Lastly, Mainline labor somehow gets management to agree to never sign another CPA or outsource another plane to be flown by a pilot not on the UAL/CAL seniority list... how long will that take before all regional feed contracts expire? A decade? All while DAL continues to outsource everything they can and take market share behind the exiting UAL/CAL regional carriers.
With all due respect...stop thinking tactically, and start thinking strategically.
How long did it take UAL to get to the point where over half of their daily departures were UAX jets - 15 years? A combined UAL/CAL will have a ton of carriers with contracts of varying lengths and its absolutely ridiculous for anybody to actually believe a wand will be waived and UAL will cancel all regional contracts or assume all that flying. That being said, if UCAL ALPA is somehow able to negotiate that as regional CPAs expire they are not renewed, even if just on 51+ seat "small jets", this will be a huge boon to the mainline pilot group and WILL swell their ranks over the long term. It will maintain status quo for now, but over years regional aircraft will start to go away and unless New United management is happy to concede a ton of market share to their competition they'll replace those RJs with likely a smaller number of larger narrowbody aircraft...swelling the mainline pilot ranks.
Additionally, Delta is reducing the number (while increasing the average seat count) of their outsourced regional aircraft while remaining within DALPA scope.