Exactly, at the turn of the century and a little beyond, when workers were being killed by unsafe business practices and basically treated as slaves, they stood up against it. Some went to jail, some died, some lost their jobs, but it got so bad they wouldn't take it anymore. At some point, the good of their industry and everyone outweighed their personal concerns and safety.

Actually, it is true. True capitalism would allow the pilots to strike, but...

Judge rules against Allegiant Air pilots, prevents imminent strike - Tampa Bay Business Journal


Interesting. How would you go about this?

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By illegal job actions and "sticking it to the man."

Couple of ways- stop accepting overtime, stop flying as an FO if you are a Captain, dump your union altogether (go unionless) and let anarchy reign, don't engage in bargaining that lowers quality of life in exchange for more airplanes or flow agreements. If its not a great place to work, smarter people won't work there and nature will just take its course. Let the company decide if they want more airplanes or flow to attract new hires, it has nothing to do with you.

I know how to stop this. Start a union then after it gets big enough write some books about how important it is to have a pilots union and stick together. Then give in to management and give up your scope to protect your higher pay scales. Allow the newer association's to join but be sure the rules mostly apply to you while giving the appearance of equality. If when the newbie's start to complain explain what they are doing wrong and tell them they should not have accepted a job like that with those terms. Oh wait that's already been done. Never mind

Sorry, I didn't think anyone would actually read the long post and the shortened version saved me 2 letters.

Very good synopsis and got a laugh. Nice.

In the late 1800s Rockefeller setup the Standard Oil Trust where the oil companies had to sell out to Standard Oil or join into a secret alliance with them. The Standard Oil Trust was able to control almost all of the oil in the US. People think that monopolies only raise prices but often they are able to push down prices to shutout competition from other technologies. Standard became the only buyer for oil train cars, pipelines, and other items to produce and transport kerosene used to light homes. It set the prices. It was able to drive the price down from 58 to 26 cents which greatly slowed the development of the new electrical systems who had difficulty competing at that price level. Consumers liked the lower prices but paid in other ways.

Currently we have the United Trust, the Delta Trust, and the American Trust and they have acted together to drive down the regional costs. The current model, several independent carriers that compete to operate under the Trust's umbrella. When they are able to keep their costs down they are rewarded with more flying. If a regional is not able to keep the costs down flying is shifted away. The regional is able to tell their pilots and flight attendants that they can't pay anymore or United/Delta/AA will take some of their flying away. And they will.

What other purposes are there to have regional airlines than to drive down the wages and benefits of pilots and flight attendants and to be able to outsource maintenance to low cost operations. Other than pilots and FAs there are not many employees at a regional.

Delta experimented with its own regional, ComAir, and American with Eagle. But those employees demanded higher wages and benefits than the independents. So ComAir was shutdown and Eagle shrunk and is being turned into another independent. ComAir's planes were sent to Gojet and others willing to fly the planes for half the price that the Comair employees cost in pay and benefits. The receiving carriers are told of the great benefits they get from faster upgrades.

For an extra dollar an hour or so the pilots at the mainline carriers agree to allow bigger and more airplanes to be flown by the regionals. Do you ever see an airline place an order for more mainline planes without tying it in with a deal to allow more RJ flying?

Now they regionals are having trouble finding pilots because who wants to work for 18000 a year. People think 23 but remember during training you don't get full pay. Are they increasing pay to bring back many of the thousands of pilots who had to go overseas to make a living? No, they go to the government and demand that the standards get lowered. They go to the government and want the government to setup programs to make pilots who will work for 18k a year. And finally, they start to offer signing bonuses to the new guys so that they can keep paying the current guys nothing. They don't want to pay all the pilots more when they can merely pay the bottom 10% more. For every one they pay a signing bonus to they are able to not pay 10 pilots at a market rate. Most of the pilots there won't leave because they want their precious PIC time or they can't afford to start at the bottom again.

An airline with a union contract cannot pay someone outside of that contract - period. If it wants to change the pay it must come to an agreement with the union. If a contact has expired and is being negotiated there is "status quo". The company cannot pay outside of the expired contract and status quo- period.

If your union lawyers are telling you something else you need to get new union lawyers who look out for the pilots and not the union.

Stop the bonuses and your pay will increase dramatically. Send your union lawyers to court to get injunctions to stop the bonuses.

Let the companies compete based upon the contracts, not the bonuses. Beat the bonus, market pay for all! Beat the bonus, market pay for all!

You make a good post but like most I think you are operating under the premise that regional airlines should continue to exist. They should not. Pilots should be doing anything and everything possible to see that their business models fail. Perfect example, RAH. What's happening there is what needs to happen everywhere.

How about mainline doing same? Stop accepting overtime forcing more to get hired. Dump the 2 class us and them system and be a real union. If you fly a United flight you should be a United pilot, Same at DAL and AA.