I think an important thing to remember is that not a single pilot here is involved in the logistics of their major codeshare. It's easy to say "mainline jobs were taken" when in reality there is no backing to this statement what-so-ever. You seem to forget that regionals provide FEED. So the next question is feed to where? Well they provide feed to the major hubs so that pax can get on the larger plane and go places far away. I've looked all over and cannot find any numbers showing how many pax on an international airliner are sitting there because a regional got them to the airport. It would be interesting to see. Have the staffing levels at majors been cut because of regional flying or has regional flying just been used as a way to expand within the US giving the majors more markets to work with? What routes are being moved from major down? If they were profitable the would have kept them. Delta started it's first ever service into Winnipeg using SKYW. That didn't take away a single mainline job and couldn't have supported a mainline aircraft to start with. Most of the flying being done by a regional aircraft are into a regional market that couldn't support the larger aircraft.

 

My understanding is that the furloughs cancel out any training agreements since the pilot has the right to seek employment elsewhere. I believe it was mentioned in a company memo somewhere as well. I could be wrong on this. I just have this feeling I read that somewhere.

 

he could always defer the recall. then once the most junior person has been recalled does he have to either return to work, or resign his number.

 

Whats interesting is that everyone is acting depressed and not accepting this new RAH flying with 'open arms' but talk is cheap guys.

Are you going to actually take those jobs, bid that base, or are you going to get behind your union and say no?

 

Why on earth would our union say no? Our union is Teamsters. Their job is to look everything over and make sure it's legit. Their job is to make sure that flying goes to the pilots that pay their wages.

Secondly it's not up to the pilots to take the flying or not. If any pilots have a say-so here it's the Midwest guys.

 

Shut'er Down!

 

We can say no & not bid MCI all you want, but at the end of the day junior pilots will be placed there.

The first flight will take place on Oct 1st. A lot can happen between now and then.

 

RJs and so-called 'Regional' airlines long ago stopped providing feed.

There is no way we can call the routes we all fly 'feeder' routes. Not between major city pairings.

The give-back of the 717s and bringing in of the 170s is nothing short of replacement.

Not blaming anyone but management here, but let's not lose sight of what this is.

 

See MAIR Holdings v Furloughed Mesaba Pilots in 2005-2006. When the company defaults on the promise of gainful employment, the unemployed are free to seek work elsewhere, even if they resign ahead of the furloughs. The precedent is more or less set here. More to the point of the discussion, feel free to mark me down as another RAH furloughee that is literally nauseous at the idea of coming back to work at the expense of MidEx pilots' jobs. As for the "get behind the union and say 'no'" comment, our union hasn't provided any such guidance. The general disgust that has been floating around message boards from the RAH pilots is independent of any union-related gripe. We may be RJ pukes, but we know a bad deal when we see it.

 

This is bad for both pilot groups. From a purely RAH perspective, it is an explicit and distinct violation of our scope to have MidEx pilots fly our aircraft through a Wet/Dry lease as long as Republic Airways Holdings, Inc own the aircraft.

The reason our payrates look the way they do is because we gave that up to keep our scope...which states no aircraft owned by RAH may be operated by anyone other than an RAH pilot on the RAH seniority list operating under the RAH contract. There are a lot of holes in our contract because of it...but our scope clause is air tight. If the company wants to sell those 12 170's to MidEx, then so be it. But they sure as hell can't lease those aircraft to MidEx and then use MidEx pilots to fly them.

Either way, this is going to be a C.F. between two pilot groups that don't want to have anything to do with it. None of our pilots want to bid over to it (the ones that end up there will be displaced there); and MidEx pilots don't want us doing their flying. It's a bad deal all around...