You can have a different operating certificate but all on the same seniority list.

The scope clauses are not as short sighted as you might think! This is not the first rodeo. Loop holes like you talk about were long ago plugged. Generally they state that any company affiliate, holding company, subsideries of holding companies or any entity that they have operational control over are covered. The strange part of this is any pilot at a regional arguing for evasion of scope clauses.
Here is one small part of the Delta scope section.
If a carrier or an affiliate of a carrier that performs category A or C operations acquires an aircraft that would cause the Company to no longer be in compliance with the provisions of Section 1 D. 2. c., the Company will terminate such operations on the date that is the later of the date such aircraft is placed in revenue service, or nine months from the date that the Company first became aware of the potential acquisition.

I doubt American or United will care if Mesa has a couple of 737-400's for DHL freight. It would be rather disruptive to cancel a regional partner that has 30 airplanes flying for them, over a few freighters.

Depends on the feed contract, and their scope language. They won't blatantly violate scope if the union calls them on it. And they union will, nobody in this day and age will be like oh it's just Mesa and a couple freighters.

The big boys make a lot of money on belly cargo too.

UAL has a signed contract with the pilots. They are required to enforce it. Delta had to write a 30 million dollar check to the pilots for falling a couple flights below the atlantic minimum for a few months.

I bet they will. Not that they view it as a threat, but there are plenty of lawyers that would take some billable hours.

If Mesa operated a few brand new 777’s for a freight outfit, United pilots wouldn’t have a dog in the fight since they wouldn’t be used in any part of the United system. The only restriction would be that Mesa could not use United passenger seats, even on Mesa metal, to deadhead crews to operate those flights. The regionals serve multiple masters and scope is there to limit how much a parent company can farm out, not what a subcontractor can do outside of that parent company network.

If the UAL scope clause mirrors the Delta clause it covers cargo operations. Independence air had nothing to do with Delta operations but Delta was forced to terminate their contract per the scope clause.

1. The PWA will be binding upon any Company affiliate. The Company will not conclude any agreement or arrangement that establishes or that will establish a Company affiliate unless the entity that will become such Company affiliate agrees in writing as an irrevocable condition of such agreement or arrangement to be bound by the PWA and if the affiliate is an air carrier or parent or subsidiary of an air carrier, to operate as part of a single carrier with the Company under the PWA, unless the affiliate operates only permitted aircraft types.

. Section 1 C. 1. includes without limitation all passenger flying, CARGO flying, freight flying, positioning flights, and ferry flights (scheduled and non-scheduled, revenue and non-revenue) and non-scheduled flights as defined in Section 2 of this PWA:

Don’t take my saying it’s happening as an endorsement.

I think the UA scope “mirroring” of Delta was just size, weight and number of aircraft. Not all the little, “can’t do this, cant do that” clauses..

It would be really silly and the shareholders would revolt if they ditched all there UA flying for a hand-full of aircraft for a cargo operations.