Originally Posted by meloveboeing
As far as the issue of all flying to be done by CO/UA. Well, this came from a couple of pilots I spoke to that were at Express when the jets showed up, and it was actually also confirmed by one management pilot. Management initially offered the EMB 145 to mainline pilots and they turned it down! I am not sure if it was an ego thing, or maybe a pay issue, I actually even read a coment about a mailine pilot not carring to fly a small jet because the pay would be to low. Also, CO pilots were not interested in merging the seniority list between Express and CO. So now they want all the flying back? Yeah, of course I would love to be flying for CO and making more money, there is no doubt that any pilot at XJT would love to be fllying the EMB 145 for CO for more money, but what is the reality of it? Regionals will stay regionals and mainline will stay mainline and therefore I still think it is better for the Regionals to have their own representation.
Remember that way back when all this was going on, being discussed and decided, the majority of us weren't here or involved in that decision. The union was run by the scab cadre and the pilot group here at the time believed what management was selling (the small jets would be used to grow mainline at other cities eventually). The majority of those pilots are now gone since this was way back in 1996-1997 or are no longer running the union. A big portion of the seniority list either came from express type carriers who grew as a result of mainline pilots giving it away or being sold a bill of goods or are now pilots who realize the mistakes from back then.
Is it not possible to learn from mistakes of the past and correct them for the future? I came from a small-jet carrier to Continental. I saw what flying those small-jets does first hand. Now that I am here I want to make sure mainline pilots have job security (ask a UAL pilot) and that we enhance the careers for all current and future pilots to have mainline opportunities. As it stands today I would never recommend this industry to my children let alone anyone else I know.