Why would anyone at a regional want bigger airframes at your company? Unless your career goal is the regionals, (which is fine if that is what you want), why would you want more flying. More flying for regionals means more days of rowing endlessly chained to the bottom of the ship as a slave for some subcontractor. It means less of a chance of ever getting hired at a Mainline Carrier.

 

I think this would have been smart years ago when regional jets first were introduced, and I am sure mainline pilots would love to go back in time and take the RJ flying. Now, the cat is out of the bag and every other mainline is contracting the lowest bidder (regional carriers) to fly the RJs. The name of the game is competition. If AA puts all 70 seaters at mainline how will their operating costs compare to Mesa which operates the same a/c? Mainline pilot wages are much higher, but along with pilot wages comes FA wages, Ramper, MTX, Gate Agents, etc.

I think it would be smart today if AA could find a way to operate all aircraft from props to 777s by one pilot group which would eliminate scope conflicts and allow the company to 'right-size' the aircraft with the route- meaning if they only have 70 people booked on an MD80 from DCA-DFW flight they could operate it with a 70-seat CRJ. But making that happen profitably is easier said than done.

 

at last... it's nice to see the lightbulb come on.... now, just convince a few more folks.

 

Lets hope that the regionals start reducing the size of their aircraft and let the mainline fly mainline planes.

Why would you care to fly a 700 instead of 200? They are both the same level of experience and that should suffice your purposes. Stop reducing the mainline fleet and your future in this industry.

 

how do you make it happen though? i'm all for it. but the HOW is the problem.

 

It has gotten out of hand. There is no way to bring it back to acceptable levels now. fresh Comm guys come out expecting to be put into an RJ for $20/hr now, so the chain is too long to truley fight now, and as these RJ guys go to the few mainline jobs, they figure they've been there, done that and don't want to step "backwards" into a 70 seat jet.

 

Well, with what has happened to the cost of flight training... the supply of people with SJS should slowly start drying up in a few years.