Scope starts to rear it’s head...
 

A number of major airline contracts regulate scope by a comparison if regional block hours to total mainline block hours or to total mainline block hours of certain categories of flying (typically narrow bodies). Some have provisions with multiple triggers for scope reduction, triggered by Flying done the previous year.

A few airlines are already hitting these triggering provisions. From airline geeks:

https://i.ibb.co/0fDb70g/E3378-CFE-B...C939-BD708.jpg

Except most managements are claiming force make ire and basically disregarding scope provisions until a mediator says other wise

Now that the LOA is in effect at United, their regionals will see flying reduced from 120% mainline NB block using a rolling 12 month average to a month to month reduction of less than 100% of mainline NB block hours. Prior to COVID, the scope restrictions on the 70/76 seaters kept the regional flying below the 100% mark when mainline was flying a full schedule. In the last few months, regional block hours have far exceeded the 120% limit on a month to month basis, while still in compliance with the 12 month look back. Now, for the duration of the LOA, the regional block hours will have to be reduced, mainline NB block hours increased, or some combination that will keep regional block hours below mainline NB block.

Force majeur claims would be very difficult to sell to a mediator given that there are a number of airlines operating with no affiliates regional airline codeshares AT ALL. And with members on furlough and decreased ALV and guarantee, you can be damn sure that the major airline unions will be fighting tooth and nail to enforce theIr own contract scope provisions for the benefit of their own members.

That's cute.

This is going to go way beyond that. Mesa is starting to fly 737's for regional pay rates. AA is farming out domestic flying to Jetblue and Alaska.

The whipsaw is going to hit mainline. It already exists in Europe and Asia. Lufthansa had/has a regional flying A340's trans Atlantic.

And Horizon has no scope limits whatsoever.

You can kiss this profession goodbye if/when NB scope goes to regionals

Quoted for truth. If this happens, better start working on plans C, D, E and F because if that happens, this industry won't be worth the money/time/qol invested into it.

just for clairty, Mesa is flying 737 cargo planes for pay rates comparable to other ACMI 737 operators. While the scales are not great CA pay does get above $200/ hr. It’s not mainline NB pay but appears to be comparable to what their competitors pay.


AA is using B6 and Alaska to expand in markets where AA does not have a strong foothold and place their codes on flights on the other two airlines on routes they already operate. What is happening there is a simple codeshare and not anything close to a regional style system for flying NBs. Considering AA, B6, and Alaska all pay within about 5% of each other for 12 year CAs, I don’t think that is really detrimental to the industry like a wave of bigger jets at the regionals.

The 100% month of scope may actually be looser than the 120% 12 mo look back going forward if there is some continued recovery. They won’t have to use March/April/May 2020’s dismal numbers to calculate it.