Originally Posted by
higney85
While I would agree that I think all 51+ seat flying needs to be mainline, many majors use 2 regionals to keep things competitive in bids. Take NWA for example- mesaba has 49 (i think) saabs... that is a pawn in the whipsaw against pinnacle with 124 (soon to be 141) 50-seat RJ's, without mesaba how can nwa leverage against PNCL? BTW, in your little plan, where does pinnacle come in for NWA? We currently operate over 700 daily flights, soon to be over 800- thats a good chunk of NW domestic operations.....
Boys (Girls?),
I was on the Express I (Pinnacles) seniority list back in '97/'98 when the reverse was happening. Mike Brady got bought out by NWA, we had recently signed a CBA, we had both MEM and MSP (as well as numerous outstation) domiciles. We thought things were gonna be great. There was even talk of us joining the NWA seniority list.
Then reality hit us like a ton of bricks. NWA decided to give ALL MSP flying to XJ. Overnight we had too many pilots and XJ had too few. Some of us went over to XJ (with some loss of seniority) but that is a story for another time.
In the end NWA decided to give much of the flying and ALL RJ85s to Mesaba. Mesaba was one of the best places to be at the time with a decent contract and crazy growth.
Compare that with what is happening now. Guys, hold on to your hats. Its just another wipsaw. It is being repeated again, almost exactly (with the exception that the jets go to XJ instead of 9E.
Good luck to both pilot groups. After all, I flew with both of them at one time or another.