It is beyond rediculous. The evolution of the massive RJ bubble was so comical and so obvious to anyone without an MBA that laughing about it now almost makes up for the many, many billions of dollars it cost us that we'll never get back.

Then to compound the problem further, they went and scrambled everything up like you mentioned just to prevent an already almost impossible strike situation because of the Comair strike, while never bothering to spend a single salaried middle management man hour on how and why that strike came about in the first place.

DCI actually ran pretty well when any given hub was dominated by a single regional doing primarily out and back feed. But in order to prevent the almost impossible next strike that could have been easily avoided in the first place by minding the store instead of blindly trusting incompetent little lieutenants in the outsourcing chain of command, they instead threw crates of wrenches and bags of sand into the gears of an otherwise fairly efficient business model (the built in redundancy of overhead and the parasitic drag of outsourcing notwithstanding). Bringing that flying in house would significantly clean up the remnants of that mess we're currently stuck with.

As to your other point I completely agree that, for daily operations, Flight Ops should be calling the shots, unless another department wants to take a time out for a percieved safety issue of course.

 

Take it to it's logical ending outcome.... US bases isn't their goal, it's cabotage in the worlds biggest airline revenue pie. After the ME companies tear down the us companies they will not be subject to unionization or RLA for better or worse. In fact they would rule the terms of employment. As you said, if you can be NY based you'd go, well once there and they terms just get crappier what would you do then?

 

I think it's more than the threat of strike. As the majors grew wholly owned regionals, they learned that the real way to get cutthroat labor rates was by pitting regional vs. regional in a succession of RFP's for contract flying. This allowed the regionals to continually ask for concessions or at least moderate wages by having the threat of flying leaving if your "too expensive". Hence with 7 regional partners, it keeps them all on their toes.

 

That is the big variable here though, isn't it?

The little blurb in question about the RFP is very interesting.

Are they just beating the "capacity dicipline" drum to stroke off the Blackberry day traders because they think thats what they want to hear? Did they phrase it like that just to assuage concerns about the associated debt? Or are these planes we're shopping truly just replacement planes on a capacity neutral basis?

If that is true, it sounds like a mostly negative fleet plan WRT pilot jobs. While our tiny 747 fleet may be replaced by something lower paying, our much larger ER fleet is appears to be slated for eventual replacement on a capacity neutral/pilot negative basis. It will take a lot fewer pilots to fly the same lift capacity when the planes we are getting are bigger than most of the ones we are losing.

 

You just got unstacked. Reason: no money in US pilots flying large airplanes.

 

Yup, and look at what happened to the one wholly owned regional who went on strike for higher wages/benefits. Where are they now?

There is no way that paying for 7 different feeds with 7 different management teams, 7 different training depts, MX depts, scheduling depts, etc. makes any economic sense, unless it keeps the overall labor costs below the break even point of taking that flying in house.

It also keeps any one or two of the seven feeders from having any leverage when it comes to seeking higher wages, or threatening the mainline feed if they were to walk during contract negotiations. It also provides a 'threat' to the mainline pilots, if they ever were to walk, that the 7 feeders would pick up the struck mainline domestic flying, and our International Code Share partners would pick up the struck international flying.

It's called whipsaw, and it's been going on for nearly as long as the airline industry has been in existence.

Being part of a National Union was supposed to put a stop to it...um...not so much.

 

I don't think the ME carriers will ever have a US base. Anyone based here would then have the right to unionize which they don't in the ME, and that threat will keep the bases away.

 

It is nuts when you look at Emirates fleet.

A332: 21 being replaced by A350
A343: 4 being replaced by A350
A345: 9 being replaced by A350
A359: 50 on order
A351: 20 on order
A380: 47 plus 93 on firm order
772: 3 being replaced by A350
772ER: 6
772LR: 10
773: 12
773ER: 93 with 59 on order

UAE population 9.2 million.

 

Talk about a wake up...WOW. We are a little little airline when it comes to Heavy Lift.

Baja.

 

How many CRJ900s on order?