Airline Pilot Central Forums - Mainline buying regionals

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Pan Am bought and stapled its regional.

It's never been a good thing, other than maybe slightly higher non-rev priority on mainline. They're still subject to competitive pressures in the regional industry. In addition to that, wholly-owned regionals can serve as "capacity accumulators" when mainline needs to quickly adjust it's regional fleet...the non-owned regionals all have contracts with cancellation penalties.

The phrase "being owned by DAL means everything" is an ironic joke in the industry.

Except the Pan Am guys can say they flew for a legendary legacy airline for a little while before BK liquidation...that would be cool, to have a model of a Pan Am 727 on your bookcase.

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Originally Posted by Mesabah (Post 1776768)

Pan Am bought and stapled its regional.

You're not talking about national, are you? If so, national had captains flying pan am equipment with 10 years less longevity than their pan am FOs.

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Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 1776797)

It's never been a good thing.

For the majority, pretty much.

However, the ones that were a part of the whole "buy up multiple commuters and turn them into ContinentalExpress" that got FTA, it WAS A GOOD THING.

I'm talking the guys that ACTUALLY GOT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE of the flow.

In a relative scale, worked great on the way up, as well as the way down, then back on the way up for them. If applicable.

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Originally Posted by Slim11 (Post 1776718)

Yes, Comair died a death of a thousand cuts. There are others who are no longer around.

AMR purchased the likes of Simmons, Command, Air Virginia, Wings West, Business Express and Executive. As mentioned elsewhere, Executive wasn't merged into what is now Envoy.

I know people who were flying at Command (ATR 42s and Shorts 360s) and Simmons (ATR 42s/72s and Shorts 360s) who were not happy with the acquisition by AMR. As smaller carriers, like Comair, they enjoyed better insurance and travel benefits along with being able to live in base. The merger of all these carriers into American Eagle, now Envoy, ruined that for many of them.

Unlike Comair employees, they did have jobs after their carriers were merged with others. Delta refused to merge ASA and Comair. They said it was too costly to merge the two carriers. That's when most of us knew this was a control issue.

There was a point in time when major carriers did own their own feeders. That cycle, with PSA, Envoy and Piedmont being owned by AAG, is repeating itself.

Prior to Comair being shut down, Delta said they didn't need to own their regional carriers preferring to have "partners." So, now, who does Delta own? Endeavor!

History does have a tendency to repeat itself.

Delta purchased Comair and ASA as a defensive move after AMR bought their feeder in the NE and left Delta short on feed there. They bought Endevour for the same reason. It was a defensive move to preserve feed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailingfun (Post 1776817)

Quote from a BB post: "It is likely the Delta MEC had advanced notice that Delta intended to buy ASA and Comair (can't prove it) but we do know the Delta MEC led a push to remove that merger language at the 1998 ALPA BOD.

Concomitant with the denial of Comair and ASA's merger request, ALPA adopted this "permitted" model which divided ALPA members into preferred and non preferred groups.

Without a real merger policy, there was no way to force real, structural, unity. In effect ALPA agreed to alter ego whipsaw, as long as it existed at the permitted aircraft level.

The perception was, and is, that express jobs are not real airline pilot jobs. That for some reason your flying, which indistinguishably mimics the flying I do, is simply a stepping stone to a real job ... and only real jobs should be protected."

Unless I am misinterpreting this then there is NO real language to protect regional pilots when being bought by mainline? Also indirectly it seems ALPA allows whipsawing for regionals that it does not allow at mainline?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailingfun (Post 1776817)

They bought Endevour for the same reason. It was a defensive move to preserve feed.

Pretty sure there was a little more to it than that. By them, BK them, get their costs down to a disgustingly low rate for regional feed. As well as being able to leverage ExpressJet down even further when it comes time for rate reset, etc......

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Originally Posted by John Carr (Post 1776807)

You are correct, I forgot about that one. It worked once.

Any idea how long the flow path took from XJT new-hire to CAL FO?

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Originally Posted by TalkTurkey (Post 1776806)

You're not talking about national, are you? If so, national had captains flying pan am equipment with 10 years less longevity than their pan am FOs.

I think that was Ransome Airlines, a Dash-7 operator.

Horizon was initially its own company but was eventually purchased by Alaska Airlines... Apart from jumpseat priority and non rev bennies, no real advantage here.