First let me say "It will never happen" but if it did, I have 15 years in here now and you think I want to start over at the bottom of some legacy, NOT! Here's what I will take Date of Hire (you can F BomB Here) exactly see. No judge is gona throw me out on the street to make this mess go away this has law suit all over it...the cat is out of the bag and it isn’t going back, sorry!

Except if ALPA agrees to it there's really no grounds for a lawsuit. And I'm sure there would be protections built in, not to mention it'd be the lowest paying aircraft at the airline so it probably wouldn't be too sought after.

DOH is something that most likely will never happen again in any merger/acquisition.

Yea, you can have date of hire. Right after the the last seniority number on the existing mainline list. You would not get to drag your seniority with you because no one who was previously hired drug thier regional time with them either. I still say all flying goes back to the majors and existing regional pilots can interview and get hired like the rest of us did. You chose to remain at a regional for 15 years, I chose to leave and move on. There are consequenses to decisions. Mine is I am currently furloughed, yours is you are always at risk of losing mainline flying.

Just out of curiosity, how many mainline folks are interested in flying 1900s, Saabs, and Dash 8s?

Wow, so what you are saying is that reigonal pilots are the victims? It’s everybody else that’s at fault and you have zero responsibility.

It’s the flight instructor, the reigonal lifer and the mainline pilots. But you have nothing at all to do with it.

Give me a break. We are all in some way at fault.

IM

If it meant getting rid of shoddy companies that pay crap & treat their employees like dirt just to secure flying, you bet I'd do it. The issue is that the regional/commuter flying evolved from just B1900's, EMB120's, J32's, J41's, Metroliners, etc to CRJ100/200's, EMB135/140/145's & CRJ700/900's, EMB175's. I think that's why you're seeing them say all flying. Even the Saabs & Dashes. Bring it all back, for the good of the industry.

In the hopes of reaching a compromise between the traditionals, lifers, and those already senior at mainline. Would anyone have trouble with this concept. I think it could be palatable for just about everyone. This assumes that the RJ flying was brought back onto property via an aquisition. What if mainline brought on all the regional pilots to the mainline certificate carrying all their seniority and longevity with them, but only while on the RJ. Should a lifer at the regional decide to bid over to the main part of the airline, they would then revert to their DOH at the mainline company. In reverse, should a mainline pilot desire to move back into the regional seat for any reason, they would revert to a DOH of when the regional was aquired. It maintains everyone's QOL, and pay, while also providing RJ guys with all the benefits of gaining a mainline job earlier in their career. And it would provide furlough protection for the junior folks at mainline. Call me a dreamer, but with the RJ industry consolidating, there won't be nearly as many pilot groups to deal with, and mainline could potentially recapture all the RJ's by purchasing only a few airlines.

As a very junior mainline guy this totally screws me, so I say absolutely not. In your theoretical integration are you willing to recognize all my previous 121 regional time? How about the military time I have for experience. Better yet why don't we go all the way back to the date we were issued our original commercial ticket as a baseline for determining seniority, this is equally as absurd as having regional pilots leapfrog me with seniority when they weren't willing to take the risk and move to a major during the last hiring opportunity.

If the RJ's are brought back they will no longer be referred to as regional jets. They will be referred to as mainline jets, flown by mainline pilots on the mainline seniority list.

I have stated before. If it has mainline paint it should have mainline pilots, period. If paid a reasonable livable wage I would definitely fly these aircraft at mainline. Doing so allows growth into increasingly larger aircraft without having to continuously reset seniority several times in a career.

More importantly it gives mainline control over the quality of thier product/service.

I would love to fly ATRs, especially the new 600 series. I never got to fly them and would enjoy them. I've done the international 767 thing, that was a lot of fun, but so are props and I'd enjoy them too for a while. If you ask a CAL pilot I think they're sure as hell willing to take the Dash 8-400s back on property in a heart beat.

The question I would like to ask is would pilots who've been flying RJs at FL370 want to go back to props, not even new ones but used ATR-425s and 725s and Dash 8-200s/300s, if it meant job security? I think it was ASA's legendary Joe Merchant who said he now flies a 50 seat RJ on the same routes he flew a 70 seat ATR and burns the same amount of fuel. Seems it'd be better to dump the 50 seaters ASAP and go all prop.

It's a reasonable concept, if the main concern is keeping lifer RJ pilots happy. Staple all of the RJ pilots and fence that flying in. I don't think mainline pilots would allow it to be a permanent thing, the fence would need to come down rather quickly (like within a year) so they can have access to the left seat.

I think another issue would be the size of it, say Delta said we'll take XJT/ASA. Well, they'd probably (if rumors are ture) immediately get park a vast majority of the 50 seat CRJs and ERJs. Leaving CRJ700s and a few 900s and one or two thousand pilots on the street, albeit with a number. And would Delta be willing to take on such a large number of pilots you never hired?

Another issue for Delta, and a major one that ends just about most dreams, is controlling debt and why take on a fleet of new RJs (in the case of the CRJ700+s and Ejets) when you can buy a 160 seat miserly fuel sipping line-ready MD90 for $8M? And 717s might be coming available and you can always look for more MD80s like Allegiant did at $4m line-ready. And one day you'll be able to get used A319s cheap.

If Delta stapled Compass, then you'd have 300 or so pilots that NWA and recently DAL did hire. You'd have the E175s. Seems great. But it was talked about and argued about ad nausem before and it didn't happen and now probably will never happen as they were sold.

The most likely scenerio for mainline pilots to take back flying is to move scope down or hold it and let increasing costs at DCI eventually cause airplanes to be parked and contracts not renwed. If its true that RA "wants out of the RJ business" then it's a plausible way to do it.

As a CAL FO I have absolutely no problem going back to flying an RJ, but it's got to be on MAINLINE pay. Look at United, they gave away scope and shortly after they got rid of 1500 guys. So, all of us junior FO's at CAL want the scope protection in place so we don't get furloughed.

The senior guys may be tempted to accept a "payoff" such as a $30 salary increase to release scope, but as soon as they do that, they will lose seniority after CAL furloughs, and lose their seat on a 757 to flow back to a 737 and get paid less. So what did they gain there? Nothing, so that's what all of us are educating the older/senior guys about.

Oh yeah, and FUPM!

Not to throw food, just an honest answer to this idea.

This is not fair at all in my book. That flying was done at the mainline, and was sold away in some poor choices. Mainline pilots lost those jobs by the thousands for their contract mistakes. Giving up seniority numbers to get them back would be a big insult added to injury.

Those new jets and old routes displaced mainline pilots who want them back. I would guess the easy way to do this would be to add 90-100 seats at mainline while transitioning 70 seat flying back bit by bit as contracts expire. This would create hiring at the majors including UAL for those wanting to go that route.

UAL paint = UAL pilots.

Time to make the majors worth going to again.


SP

I think that some on here are making the assumption that the mainline carriers would buy the express and I don't see that happening. I know that at least some of the RJ's are owned by mainline and operated by express. The future seems to be with 90-120 seaters, not 70 so this would require new purchases. Why would management buy a company with pilots at 15-20 year pay scales when they could hire them at year one pay?

Sometimes I have to laugh at this forum. There are post after post about how "Its all mainlines fault we outsourced RJ's". Ok, let's just assume thats true, and forget about the fact that the UAL 70 seat giveaway was voted in with the threat of a CH11 imposed contract that had ZERO scope in it as the alternative. Almost every regional pilot now flying got their job at the expense of a mainline job. So now there is a move to eliminate that flying, and get those jobs back, and what happens? We read posts like this.

Lawsuit? Based on WHAT? You exist at the mercy of UAL/CAL management. Your job is not owed to you, and you are not entitled to it. You want DOH at mainline if the RJs are brought in house??? Bwahahahahahahahahahhahahaa!!! I don't see any mainline furloughed guys with DOH at Expressjet. Expressjet operates on a contract with UAL and CAL. If that contract is phased out or eliminated when it expires, what are you going to base your lawsuit on?

This whole thread just re-asserts my belief that pilot's are our own worst enemy. Now this is a pilot on the outside looking in, but it just seems like mainline guys want the regional jobs back for sake of the industry (or their own profession), and regional guys want to keep their jobs or seniority if they get folded in mainline. All of it is reasonable if you sitting on one side or the other. Anyway, like I said I'm on the outside of this whole airline thing so I may be completely off, but none of this makes me want to join the ranks of the "big boys" flying "shiny jets." With that said, good luck to everyone and hope it all works out in the end.

Again, maybe my first response was too harsh as I don't have an issue with the average RJ pilot who takes any job. I know it is easy for some who have a job to forget how they got there and I don't begrudge the individual just trying to move up, like I did in the 90s.

My issue is with ALPA, who GAVE the scope away in exchange for empty promises of A funds and other huge missteps. They are trying to represent both sides in this debate and many of us are pretty tired of it.

Best Wishes-

KC

Hello auflyer06 and welcome to the forum-

I think the big difference here is that NO major is going to buy their feeder and merge any pilot (I don't care if you have 20 yrs with expressjet!) with mainline. Late nineties Delta and a few others bought their feed but all have been frantically spinning them off in the past few years.

What will happen is the contracts UAL/CAL have with regional carrier X will not be renewed and all of that job security that those employees thought they had will disappear. Just look at the history of ACA. Not trying to be cruel to anybody but you have to know your company's business model and how it fits in to the bigger system. Maybe this will change in the future, who knows.

KC

Fact of the matter is this.....these regionals are scrambling to consolidate because they realize the gravy train FFD contracts they've been living on are coming to an end. Why do you think BB @ RAH bought up YX & F9? Because he knows that RAH will have to create their OWN income. The 50 seaters are being parked at a rapid rate, & while there will always be a place for them, they will not be replaced as they time out. Even Bombardier and Embraer realize this. They quit building them. Skywest is buying XJT because it knows it needs a bigger piece of the UAL pie, the same reason they bought ASA from DAL. These regional CEOs are realizing the consolidation will be necessary for their survival, because the Legacy's will stop offering no risk contracts, & now require the Regional to take greater risks and endure losses. They know that they won't be able to undercut each other, as it will turn into a horrible blood bath. They game is changing rapidly, & many are scrambling to be the survivors of the regional group. More consolidation in the regional ranks will occur, and as Scope is maintained/tightened by the Majors the Regionals will be forced to go back to turboprops and finance their own airplanes. Legacy's don't want these airplanes on their balance sheet anymore.

I hope this scope pushes through. I fly a 70 turboprop and yes I would love to see mainline have that flying. And a regional be a true regional flying short hops to hubs. Not this 50 seat RJ stuff from Houston to Toronto. And even though some of these oustourced airlines fly nothing but 50 seat jets, whats the difference from them flying 2 50 seat for every 1 70 seat. Just because its a 50 seat jet they think they arent touching mainline flying.

I hope the scope is approved. They deserve it.

We need to protect routes. We tried to do that in the last contract at UAL but we were beaten by management.

ORD to MIA,(etc.), should be mainline...

What language do you suggest might accomplish this?

CAL had language if I'm not mistaken to say no RJ/Coex flying between hubs. Let me go look, airlinepilotcentral.com does include the pilot contracts....

look, took 3 minutes:

Continental, Section 1 (Scope) Part 4 B.
The Company will not permit Express Carrier Flying between Company Hubs. If an Express Carrier schedules a pair of successive flights of Express Carrier Flying to be operated either under a single flight number or on a single aircraft, where one flight is scheduled to originate at a Company Hub and the second flight is scheduled to terminate at a second Company Hub, the Company will impose an IATA standard schedules Information Manual Type “A” Traffic Restriction Code on the through flight which will suppress its display.

[edit: delete quote]

I'm confused. What ALPA leaders are telling anyone that this is good of "all" pilots? If anything, ALPA National has run for the hills. This is my ALPA vs their ALPA vs their ALPA vs their ALPA.

As to mainline vs. regional, as a former regional pilot and XJT at that, let me make sure whats being insinuated here, is it that mainline management is seperate from mainline pilots and the regional feeders? Hence, mainline says here is 1 million block hours and the mainline pilots and regional fight over it?

Here is the litmus test, who's contract scopes who?

We thought we had language in the UAL contract that would accomplish just that. For instance, express cannot fly between hubs. Why not stipulate the city pairs, or just say express may not fly any route that was previously flown by mainline without consent? Or mileage? There are any number of ways to write this into a contract...

For example...

1-C-1-c Feeder Flying on Company Routes
1-C-1-c-(1) A Feeder Carrier shall not initiate a new
scheduled Feeder Flying Round Trip in any Market
operated by the Company at any time in the preceding
twenty-four (24) months, unless the Company
demonstrates that a Company Round Trip that may be
initiated in the Market instead of the Feeder Flying
Round Trip would not pass the BIRR Test.
1-C-1-c-(2) The Company shall not remove a
scheduled Company Round Trip from any Market
served by Feeder Flying unless the Company
demonstrates that the Round Trip to be removed would
not pass the BIRR Test in the absence of a Feeder
Flying Round Trip scheduled to depart within thirty (30)
minutes of the Company Round Trip.

Remove a sentence or two and all is good...

Someone above said that all regional pilots owed there jobs to lost mainline jobs. I am not so that is entirely true. I first flew for AE in 1992... there were FIVE AE companies at the time... with well over 2000 pilots between them.. hell we had 1000 at "Flagship Airlines ala Nashville Eagle".... and there are what 2700 AE pilots today..... I bet the difference could be measured in hundreds not thousands as the difference in AE numbers then and now. WHAT is different is what they fly..... out of RDU the Saabs, Shorts, and J31's flew to all the little towns of NC, VA, SC .....now those pilots are flying longer routes in jets instead of those TPs....... AA/AE maybe the exception rather than the rule... It would be interesting to see if the numbers were available how many pilots flew for each legacy carrier back then and how many pilots flew for feeder carriers support that carrier back then ... and contrast that with the numbers of today.....

Also, don't forget that more and more mainline pilots as we move forward will be former regional pilots who define pulling up the ladder behind them as giving up scope, and they're not interested in doing that because they know scope concessions = furloughs. Strict scope = hiring, i.e. people below them, and movement.

And regionals have done a great job at securing good wages, benefits, schedules, and quality of life that make being a regional pilot so rewarding.

This is not for the good of all pilots. It is for the good of UAL/CAL pilots. If it helps others then great.

What gives us this right?
Planes painted in United colors
Customers buying United tickets

Let your company sell thier own tickets and operate thier own brand, let's see how that works out.

With the attitude you're displaying here I bet you really give United customers quality service. That is another reason the outsourcing should stop.

Again, outside looking in, but that idea seems better. More competition is better in my book.

It'd be suicide. They wouldn't make it more then a few years.

I don't think many are concerned about the bottom of the mainline seniority list. It's the top half that, to them, may think they have nothing to gain.

http://worldairlinenews.files.wordpr...s-ont-m0lr.jpg

There is no lack of competition. The good thing is the market, outside of SWA's influence on the DOJ/DOT, has been allowed to sort itself out with competition, oil, labor and credit. The end result is chapter 7s, 11s, and a whole lot of M&A for survival, which is also just as natural as pricing.

There are a couple of things at work here, its not simple stuff. Legacy carriers are in debt and focused on debt, credit is tight, capacity constraint is being exercised by just about everybody because everyone appreciates the consequences, legacy operators are merging, mainline pilots are moving towards scope before pay, manufacturers are having a hard time finding buyers, mainline operators just got an eye opener with RAH and no longer want to fund their competition, 50 seaters are too expensive and getting worse, bad publicity from outsourcing flying (Colgan and Comair crash), regional contracts will not be PPD anymore, regional airline staffing is becoming more and more expensive as average longevity increases, the economy is in a long recession or headed towards a double dip but oil is still up there which is ominous sign of things to come, the SWA business model is hitting a wall, and if you don’t have a good international alliance you’re sunk.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years all of Delta's fleet is silver and you hear pilots saying "Welcome aboard Skyteam Airlines, by Delta Air Lines." :eek:

Even if the top of the list is willing to sell out the bottom, and thats not necessarily true anymore, the middle and the bottom are not willing to do it. Remember there was upheaval surrounding the MEC at Delta over Compass, DCI and scope and we're not even in a contract year.

Hence, the importance of the U/CAL announcement.

Not throwing stones. But commuting on UAL, as well as 2 other legacies routinely for over 10 years now, I'd say that they already do a pretty good job of providing "quality service" as you put. Sadly, at some paint jobs, the quality or service provided to the passenger between the mainline and the outsourced product isn't that different many times. Talking on the customer service level here. No where is that more evident than where I'm based now.

But I do agree, the outsourcing and ALL the collateral effects it has needs to stop.

I was DelCon that whole time and only flew a few branded trips but......sniff......sniff :(

I really enjoyed that flying. :(

It's too bad it didn't work out, the flying was a blast.

I don't have the exact numbers here, but using your date of 1992, the percentage of regional flying in UALs domestic market was a very VERY small number. It's now over 50%. UAL is half the size it was 10 years ago, and our regional flying has increased about 10 fold. It's not every regional job that was born as a mainline replacement, but at UAL it's a very very large number

A while ago I did a rough calculation of UAL pilot jobs lost based on seat numbers of RJs which replaced seats on 737s/A320. I did not figure block hours or seat-miles flown, but assuming those are the same, the number of UAL mainline jobs that became RJ jobs was about 2,500. The sad part is, the UAL guys thought they were saving their pensions by releasing scope. Didn't quite turn out that way. Ended up getting DP'd by management on that one, losing both the pension cash AND at least 20% of the pilot group.

Don't be surprised of a 100 seat order after the merger is finalized/approved. DAL has 76 seaters but the 100 seaters will be a better match/market competition for those 76 seaters....and 100 seaters flown by United pilots.

Lord, I'd love it if U-CAL orders 100 seaters for mainline. If we can just get AMR to do it then it'll make for interesting situation at DAL. Although as previously mentioned, why buy a $30M 100-seater when you can have a fleet of 160 seat MD90s for $8M/ea or maybe even 717s. Debt and rent costs are just as important as anything else around here.

Take a look in here and see what you can find:

Airline Analysis

If I am reading it right when it comes to UAL, the % of revenue and % of expense that the regionals have for UAL when combined with UAL revenue and costs is around 18%. They make up about 13% of the total UAL available seat miles but make up 44% of the total fleet. They do make more than they cost, about $0.1704 RASM and $0.1635 CASM.

Interesting stuff. Its all about RASM-CASM. I mean if someone wants to pay $1,000 a ticket for a 45 minute flight then the RASM-CASM is fantastic. Not usually great on a market with a lot of competition.

You couldn't really group Trans States in there, at least not for a lack of trying to fly bigger jets. If they had their way back in 2005, they'd be flying CRJ-700s right now. Luckily (or mostly unluckily, depending on how you look at it), Trans States got screwed by management, hence GoJet. Plus, some of those MRJs have been promised to Trans States, provided:
1. TSA survives contract negotiations (which is looking grim),
2. Mitsubishi actually meets their deadline,
3. TSH finds flying for those aircraft.

That's my two pennies.

On topic: Hopefully CAL/UAL will succeed.