Definately true. We are all painfully aware of the Comair situation and feel for all of you. However, being owned by MAIR is seen as worse than being owned by NWA. Either way, things are never going to be the same for us.

I just paged throught the 75 page court filing MAIR has before the Federal court in Houston regarding the scope letter. IT CLEARLY STATES that MAIR and Big Sky ARE and WILL CONTINUE to pursue flying that is outside of the scope letter. One way or the other, bigger aircraft are coming to Big Sky. It is going to be up to the Big Sky pilots to stand strong for what they should get paid to fly them.

 

And trust me, we will. Union negotiations are going on right now and there has been no talk of bigger airplanes around here yet. Thanks for filling me in on those specifics, i'll be sure to pass them on.

 

What?!?!? Please elaborate...this sounds humurous

 

While I would agree that I think all 51+ seat flying needs to be mainline, many majors use 2 regionals to keep things competitive in bids. Take NWA for example- mesaba has 49 (i think) saabs... that is a pawn in the whipsaw against pinnacle with 124 (soon to be 141) 50-seat RJ's, without mesaba how can nwa leverage against PNCL? BTW, in your little plan, where does pinnacle come in for NWA? We currently operate over 700 daily flights, soon to be over 800- thats a good chunk of NW domestic operations.....

 

Boys (Girls?),

I was on the Express I (Pinnacles) seniority list back in '97/'98 when the reverse was happening. Mike Brady got bought out by NWA, we had recently signed a CBA, we had both MEM and MSP (as well as numerous outstation) domiciles. We thought things were gonna be great. There was even talk of us joining the NWA seniority list.

Then reality hit us like a ton of bricks. NWA decided to give ALL MSP flying to XJ. Overnight we had too many pilots and XJ had too few. Some of us went over to XJ (with some loss of seniority) but that is a story for another time.

In the end NWA decided to give much of the flying and ALL RJ85s to Mesaba. Mesaba was one of the best places to be at the time with a decent contract and crazy growth.

Compare that with what is happening now. Guys, hold on to your hats. Its just another wipsaw. It is being repeated again, almost exactly (with the exception that the jets go to XJ instead of 9E.

Good luck to both pilot groups. After all, I flew with both of them at one time or another.

 

Well just my crazy guess but.... the CRJ 900 or 705's as they maybe go to 9E and the E-175's goto XJ and Compass never comes to fruition... but who knows right now I just a guy with a martini in his hand.....