Cruz5350

$20 and a bottle of Scotch. Deal?

pete2800

Deal.


But we'll have to hang out and drink the Scotch.

pete2800

Interesting email from the union today... Apparently they met with QX management to discuss the acquisition of another airplane type. Management apparently expressed a desire for an airplane that would fill the seat gap between a 76-seat Q400 and the 160 or so seats of a 737-800/900. The union has asked for more info regarding time frame, number of possible airplanes, any "company asks," etc.


Why Horizon management would be concerned with Alaska's seat-count gap is completely beyond me... and the part about airplanes larger than 76-seats operated by a non-mainline carrier makes me a bit nervous. The part about "company asks" sounds worse still.

LaserRacer

Why meet indeed... They already have provisions for it... To quote a now infamous video..."it's in the contract biiiitttch"!

LaserRacer

All kidding aside though... This development is a large threat to the betterment of our industry as a whole... A threat which many seem to be blinded to by SJS or apathetic towards due to short term gain.

Best case scenario (and least likely) is that we get some new aircraft the same size as those currently being operated here.

Next best is that this is nothing more than propaganda to get people to come here.

Thirdly, these talks amount to nothing more than a "by the way, we are doing this... We already have the pay rates in place, consider this discussion a courtesy"

Finally (and unfortunately most likely) these talks eventually result in a revised (not in our favor) pay scale, which the pilot group will trip over themselves to approve in order to get the new jets on property.

If Alaska Air Group manages to place larger aircraft at their regionals, you can bet that the other majors will be using that new "industry standard" in their next round of negotiations.

buddies8

what type of aircraft are you referring to?

pete2800

We don't know. The statement was to the effect of "filling the seat gap between 76-seat Q400's and 160+ seat 737's."

So E190/195, C-series, MRJ... those are the aircraft that come to mind in that size range.

cactusflyer

My understanding is that Alaska's scope clause doesn't do anything more than keep AAG from outsourcing 737 flying elsewhere, so if SKW and TSA can't resolve the issues with getting the MRJ around the scope clauses of their mainline overlords, AAG might be able to get a deal from Mitsubishi in order to get some of the aircraft operating in the US.

That said, I agree with LaserRacer that the most likely outcome is for management to exploit the "reverse SJS" here and use jets (or the promise thereof) to make pilot-unfriendly changes to the payscale.

buddies8

AAG is American Airlines group or you using it as Alaska airline group?

LaserRacer

He is referring to Alaska Air Group.