They will be there until we, as a pilot group, stand up and shout NO!

Call BS all you want. Emotionally I am with you. I see no reason to support an airline that has a pilot group that is not represented by ALPA. (BTW I hope we can bring them in to ALPA as they are the biggest risk to an end-round to our Section one via feed to other skyteam partners.) I do not like what many of the RJET pilot say when I talk to them. Most are tickled pink to fly a 190 for 116 or less and hr and hope we keep selling scope. It is a group that does not see the forest from the trees.

All of that said, until this ruling cause an operational or structural change to the business entity known as RJET. Until these pilots can bid across certificates without going though a initial indoc. Until the certificates are managed on a day to day basis by the holding company, little has changed except that the pilot group is seen as one. It does not change the mechanics of it.

I will be the first to agree that it is BS, but BS or not it is legal under what we define as an air carrier. Until it can be proven that these certificate management teams are not managing their own certificate and BB is doing it from the holding company, there is little leverage. I do know that our Code Share compliance committee has looked and will continue to look at Republic very closely. The reps are very aware of the "heartburn" the pilot group has over this, and will not give them anymore leeway than they already have.

All of that said, we as pilots must watch and be vigilant in reporting anything we see on this. Facts and proof will be needed.

Exactly, but it can and we are watching. This latest agreement was for six years. If that does not tell this group anything we need to pay more attention. DAL is actively layering these agreements. I do not believe DAL is planing on shrinking in the next five or so years, so let look at what else may be coming to market.

I know if I were a regional pilot that wanted to make a place like Republic my home, I would be very concerned by the actions and duration of these new agreements. I then would change my career strategy.


Unless we willfully sell the farm, the landscape of the airlines will change yet again, in the next ten years. All of it will be because of a steadfast commitment not to sell scope, and the economics that will make the DCI gauge segment of the market so unprofitable, no one will want to continue to operate these jets. (This is of course until they hang a GTF off of a E-Jet.)

A sunset clause solves all of these issues.

In a way you are right about intrinsic value. A pilot's intrinsic value to a particular plane load of passengers on a particular day is the same as it was 40 years ago. So in a micro economic sense, yes. But in a macro economic sense of the entire airline pilot market place it's undeniable that a pilots value has declined since the salad days of aviation. If it weren't there would be higher wages across the board.

It's mostly a function of supply and demand. Mostly on the supply side due to lowered barriers to entry, which we don't control. Deregulation caused price pressures on labor witch were partially solved by outsourcing to lower wage pilots with lower qualifications. Would a 200 hour flight academy graduate have been flying around passengers in 1964?

Whose fault is it? Certainly not the regional pilots for taking jobs. Thinking that someone should not take a regional job at a lower wage than a mainline guy because he should somehow sacrifice himself to "save the profession" is asinine. It's akin to Berkowitz saying "please stop me before I kill again!"

Its partly the fault of senior major airline pilots who lacked the forward vision to see that deregulation had irrevocably altered the marketplace and allowed small jet flying to be outsourced. Once that line was crossed it's very hard to go back.

Mostly it's the fault of the government. They deregulated the market to achieve more consumer choice and lower fares due to competition. Mission accomplished on that front. Then they didn't allow the players to rationalize the new marketplace. Whenever the most capable of the established players made moves to consolidate their market share and survive profitably, the government allowed new players to enter at ridiculously low costs. When established players faltered that happened to serve markets frequented by government elites, they bailed them out, a la USAIR.

What's the solution? The 1500 hour requirement is a start. Attaching subcontractor liability to the parent carrier would probably do more to bring back flying in house than a whole snake farm of Cobras.

What I am trying to say is that we need representation that understands the current and future market, not historical ones. To demand a return to a bygone era because of a sense of entitlement is counter productive to say the least. Look ahead, clocks and calendars don't run backwards.

Look at the going rate for a BBJ Captain and FO, then compare to ours.

Look at a SWA FO rate and then those rates. Then look at productivity and provide an hourly rate for those BBJ guys and compare it to your rate. That will give you a good indication of what market forces pay compared to us.

It has been a few years since I have done this, but I can tell you that our hourly rate is a lot lower than the BBJ's/Global Express pilots are. If you are really board, look at what Coke pays their pilots. They are one of the few companies that has high utilization of their pilots.

And what difference pray tell would that make?

Oh yeah.... we need the dues...

I think the fall schedule might disagree with your premise just a tad bit....

Markets aren't wrong. They just are. Your hypothetical confuses micro vs macro. If the micro really mattered that much the actuarials would demand higher experienced and thus higher priced labor. Every try for a corporate job as PIC? Why are their minimums (in my experience) 5000 hours? Insurance.

You make some very pertinent points.

First, in the 1960's they were hiring pilots with no experience at places like UAL and then giving all of their certificates.

Wrt to market forces, yes, they ebb and flow as they do in all industries. What killed us is puppy mills, ab inito, and the fact that we had a decade of negative margins. The last is the biggest nail to our coffins here at the mainline. Going forward, market forces will be in place that will require substantially higher pay to get people to go in to this career. People will flood in, and when supply goes back up, we will go the other way. Same happens in any profession, but not on the scale we as airline pilots have seen.

Right now there is a very big issue with supply over the next 15-20 years. How will the regulators deal with this. While, foreign pilots may be the answer, but the answer could also be targeting high school students like the rest of the world does, pay for their initial training and then hire them. It is being looked at very seriously. With the military not producing the pilots like they always have, a new plan must be in place. Passengers will want pilots and as a result the market will demand we be there.

For the here and now, what solves our compensation issue is for pilots to think out side of the box. This allows us to set the ground work for changing the market forces that set the limits airline managers put in to our negations. If we become willing to fly something on this seniority list that does not pay well today, over time those market forces change and as a result so does the compensation of said seat.

Demanding something within a unified voice is important, but changing the market forces is even more important for long term success.

GMAB.

Look at how we are shifting airplanes this fall.......


Also, I was not referring to a plus or minus five to seven percent, I was talking about a 20-30% decrease in our market presence which would equate to DCI flying as well as a great deal of mainline narrow gauge flying. I was directly referring to the layering of these DCI agreements and their expiration dates.

Not a good comparison because we do different types of flying. We do not have high utilization because the nature of our business is inefficient.. well.. scheduling of the pilots is inefficient anyway. Hub and spoke should be the most efficient model out there, but it isn't because scheduling throws a few bones in the sand and the schedules come out... witness 3 day 12 hour trips... No.. our "peers" are the other hub and spoke air carriers wrt to business model, and by translation, productivity. This is a main reason why I think we need stiffer trip rigs. You want us to sit in the base for 2 or 3 hours.. it'll cost you... That being said, it is not OUR fault that this is so, and maybe those other carriers should provide some metric for baseline of pay.