Can you point to case law that supports your hypothesis? No. Name staples pre-TWA, I’m genuinely curious. You are saying things you’ve heard others say and I’m okay with that. That law doesn’t mention “staples” irc.

 

I’ve given you about six reasons this isn’t going to happen and you choose to nitpick one of them? Do some research, then form your own opinion. I have mine.

 

I could see United bringing some of the 175s they own in house and training United pilots to fly them. At that point it would also make sense to buy some 195s as well. I don’t know if it will happen but it’s getting to the point of making a lot of sense. They might also buy their regionals and do something like AA has done with them to gain management control. Mesa sure could benefit from that. But buy the regional just for the pilots? Tell me you don’t understand the industry without telling me you don’t understand the industry.

 

Most majors have just gone to great lengths to simplify their fleets and even so, their training departments are struggling to keep up. It’s the domino effect:

Those who retire are generally those with the highest seniority who have gravitated into the equipment that pays the best.this was a huge issue in COVID when they gave out early retirements and they are still paying for it. So you retire an A350 widebody CA. A younger A330 widebody CA bids for that slot. So you have to train him/her. But that leaves an A330 slot open. So some young A320 pilot CA on that. Now he’s gotta be replaced. Every level you add to that is one more type rating and/or upgrade event. Sticking a 175 into the mix just makes it that much worse. And unlike at a regional where everybody getting their initial type is on first year regional pay, most of the ‘domino trainees will be making serious pay based on current longevity and previous aircraft during training.

But it’s not JUST the training events. Add three years of working as a 175 FO to the mix, and everybody goes up three years in seniority and in pay the first 12 years they will be working at the major. That winds up being a huge extra expense for the company. The company won’t buy that and even if they would, the pilots OVER 12 years seniority won’t buy it because they know it’s a zero sum game and paying 175 guys more means they are going to get less.

 

I’ve heard a rumor that United already has a 175 pay scale in the contract. Maybe no truth to it. And by the way, Mesa is flying 175s to the desert on a weekly basis. So while there are plenty of reasons not to bring them in house, it’s got to be expensive to have those planes, the newest 175s in United’s fleet, sitting mothballed.

 

It's a tradeoff between maintaining regional service during a pilot shortage, and the economic tipping point of RJ operations. Tradition says that unions are loathe to have ANY captain scale lower than ANY first officer scale, so in most shops the 175 CA scale would need to be $1 more than 777/350 FO scales. That's what hurts the business case. They could pay 175 FO's $30/hr if they're willing to hire CFI's for that.

If they can make the 175's work economically in-house, then they're likely to do so in the near future (50-seaters, no way). That doesn't mean they'll buy and SLI a regional... more likely they'd buy/lease the assets and hire the pilots. They could give preferential hiring to people already qualified in type, but then you have the street captain / seniority friction. More likely they'd make some deal with the union to allow them to hire 175 pilots who would get a short training course (basically indoc, FOM stuff) and would be seat-locked on type for a while.

If 175's don't work economically, they might still do it at a loss for a while just to maintain their regional network. In that case they would eventually transition RJ's back to outsourced FFD operators... just because you have RJ payscales at mainline, doesn't mean that you have to bring all RJ's in house, or keep them in house. As long as scope allowances still exist, the RJ's can always go back where they came from when the time is right.

A major *could* actually in theory buy and SLI an RJ pilot group. As mentioned, MB would prevent a staple but a major could just allow an SLI... the mainline pilots would be apoplectic of course but nothing they can really do. Scope clauses that I'm aware of protect the mainline group from getting screwed, but they don't allow them to screw another pilot group (again MB would prevail on that anyway). But the problem here is that your newly integrated senior RJ pilots would want to use their windfall seniority to bid a bigger airplane so more training churn. Maybe fence off all mainline planes for five years.

I think the more likely scenario is RJ pilots hired under a provision that would seat lock them into the 175 for a while. Depending on the CBA, they might or might not need union concurrence to assign "new hires" to a specific airplane with a seat lock.

 

no way United would waste mainline salaries on a 75 seat platform

 

Who has parked what ?

 

It will no longer be a 75 seat platform. They can add more seats to those fleets if desire if they are brought in-house and flown by mainline pilots…. The E175s flown outside of the mainline seniority list would have to remain a 75 seat platform. If the Union and management can make a deal on rates, the E175s can be brought in-house and have seats added in the spread the increased costs even more so. But you also have to factor in FAs and mx personnel as well will be mainline wages. So more seats would need to be added to offset the increased costs of bringing the E175 in-house.

 

Rates for anything smaller than a 320/737 would have to be at a minimum comparable to Delta’s A220 rates. A big chunk of new hires come from the military, LCC’s, and regionals from other networks. Any rate less than that would only encourage desirable applicants to accept offers elsewhere.