Because Mitsubishi said it. They delayed testing for a month or so after initial test flights a year ago, saying the wing needed strengthening. They have since done that.

https://twitter.com/rschuur_aero/sta...42277750013952

They can fly them for Alaska but would have to terminate their agreement and cease all flying for Delta.

Try google or read a trade publication like avweek.

I call BS on your claim. The shaved weight and wing snapped part. You don't know it snapped because they're trying to shave scope weight, or any weight in general. You got to stop listening to the voices in your head once in a while.

What does making money really mean? Regional feed is supporting the connecting flights. How much revenue you allocate to the regional feed is a pure accounting exercise.

Hence, majors really view it more as a cost factor that needs to be minimized.

When regional feed is roughly half of the domestic brand feed, chopping off the rj kills not only the half of domestic feed, but the majority of intl feed, on a macro level. Few truly fly from JFK-LHR as their trip, it's a layover involving an RJ to complete the journey. You get no pushback on mainline taking flying back, but regionals exist to supply feed at a discount. Thinking otherwise isn't following the money. If 2 mainline flights a day, same seats, cheaper overall costs, worked better than 5-6 RJ's a day, it would have been done in 2009 when things went sideways. Instead of 5-6 a day, the schedule was 4-5 in an effort to ensure profitability, or minimize loss. You can't put mainline (76+ everywhere) and make a profit without frequency and a network to meet demand of both time and cost. Once you kill a station from one carrier, the others simply grow the presence. The same existed with 19 seats, 34 seats, and 50 seats. The population grows and costs come down per seat to allow overall growth, but at the end of the day the frequency is still a need and empty seats are lost revenue. Years down the road a 50 seater 5x a day will likely be replaced with a 76 seater 6x a day. That's 250 seats vs 456 seats. The difference is population growth vs operating costs. More seats filled, lower cost, newer aircraft are cheaper per seat mile, if you fill them. Economics 101. If you can fill 400+ a day at X price, the margin of profit is higher than 250 @ Y.

I do understand the network externalities of a hub and spoke model as well as the need for frequency.

My point was regrading profitability accounting and the insinuation that regional feeder routes need to be profitable. Tickets are priced and sold by origin-destination market. So revenue is really accruing at a level of:

ROC - LHR
SYR - LHR
etc.

But cost are obviously incurred by route, i.e. ROC - JFK, SYR - JFK and JFK - LHR.

To come up with any sorts of profitability metric to speak of you need to allocate revenue from the ROC - LHR OD market between ROC - JFK and JFK - LHR. There are various approaches to do that, e.g. distance in miles and other ways. But they are just artificial accounting practices and generally speaking, the long-haul portion looks more favorable, i.e. more profitable than the feeder portion in all of these approaches as costs are generally not linear with distance flown or whatever other metric they chose.

From a mainline partner point of view it really comes down to minimizing the cost in general and optimizing network profitability. But talking about feeder profitability is a little misleading.

LOLwut is your point?

Not coming to an agreement doesn't lead directly to. I ding arbitration. Except for Alaska a few years ago, I'm not aware of any pilot group that has agreed to binding arbitration.

Regional feed is about 10% of Delta's mainline feed. You are confusing departures with actual passengers. Departures are also now well below 50%.

Yes, Delta or any of the big three would be picked apart by anti-trust laws.

Ok I have to ask as a non-pilot, why does Delta have sway over SkyWest in terms of what planes it can fly? If SkyWest wants to fly a 87.3k pound plane and Delta limits its regionals to 86k, what business is it of theirs? SkyWest pilots are SkyWest employees, not Delta employees, aren't they?

It's the Delta pilots that put the limit in their contract in order to protect their jobs. If Delta/United/AA could, they would have regional pilots flying 747s. SkyWest (and every other regional) are sub-contractors and fly under the limitations of their contract with their mainline partners.

Because we own the code. Period.

SKYW can fly hourly A380's from their SGU hub to every city in America if they want to. They just can't do it while being a DL partner.

SKYW is free to go IndyAir anytime they want to. But as long as they want to do DL (or UAL, etc) flying, they are subject to those agreements and WRT DL, DALPA owns the code and controls what they can do. They do not have, nor will we grant, them permission to go above our current seat and weight limits. Not allowed. Period.

Take it easy on the guy :confused:

You sound like a fun guy Gloopy.........

You own a McDonald's. It's your restaurant, but are you allowed to sell pizza and egg rolls? No.

But that would be the coolest McDonald's though.

Not to nitpick but McDonald's back in hawaii used to have portugese sausage offerings, so I believe there is some wiggle room.

But can they sell BigMacs and not just Cheesburgers?

That would actually be a Mcd's product. Most chains will vary their menu across the globe to meet local food tastes. Ever been to mcdonalds in asia? Not the same, at all.

So basically the majors have SkyWest by the balls and are squeezing hard. And it sounds like SkyWest has no leverage to counter them.

Honestly, does anyone think that if they didn't have a weight clause forced on them they would suddenly start flying 737s/A320s and compete against their partners?

It's happened before. Didn't end well for the regional involved.

Indy went solo in the worst aviation economic environment in history. That said, the share holders at SKY would never allow it, as ASA's are basically free money.

The Expressjet branded flying didn't work out too well either, timing is everything.

Thanks! Scope is the most important part of any pilot contract. It is literally career and profession defining. This profession wouldn't be any fun if airline managements had unlimited ability to shop every plane around to the lowest bidder constantly. Scope = stability = earnings = fun. :cool:

The other side of that is existing airlines have never been in a better position to play ruthless hardball with any recalcitrant upstart.

Yes, but the point is, as a franchisee, the original corporate company dictates whats on the menu whether it be Big Macs in the US or Sushi Burgers in Japan.

Its mutually beneficial to both parties. The franchisee gets to easily sell a well known, viable product without doing much marketing and the corporate parent collects royalites without having to manage the restaraunt.

RIP inventor of Big Mack passed today. McDonald's awarded him a plaque for his sandwich.

How'd you guys do holding the line on WB scope in TA16? I know you think it's just 48.5 to 46.5 and may not be a problem at all (i read your DL forum post and have lots of DL friends), but if the company didn't want it and didn't see upside to it (for them, not you), they wouldn't have stuck it in there. At least there won't be more jumbo RJs flying for DCI. That's a plus. Thanks (honestly) for raising the bar for the rest of us with pay. I just wish scope, touted by you as the most important part of any pilot contract, wasn't sold...not even one Atlantic crossing a day.

Here we go again.

How about this: The pilots' collective bargaining agent has a contract with the airline that includes a restriction that specifies all aircraft above a certain weight or with more than a certain number of seats must be flown by those pilots if the flying is done under the code/marketing of the airline for which they fly. Further (in Delta's case) if any regional affiliate exceeds those restrictions, even under another code/fee-for-departure agreement, they may no longer fly under a regional affiliate/codeshare/fee for departure with that airline.

Not ownership of a "code." More than a vote. A contractual restriction.

Delta has zero sway over what Skywest flies. Skywest however wanted to fly for Delta. In the agreement they signed they stated they will abide by the scope restrictions in Delta's contract.

Its not as simple as that. The 48.5 remains. The only thing that was changed was an option to go as low as 46.5 on the trans atlantic JV, but only if at that point 650K global block hours were also protected, which was WAY more than otherwise would have been. But more importantly, the 2% drop would then have to be measured yearly and always be in compliance, as opposed to a 4 year period that only has to be in compliance one year every 4.

So to say it was a simple "selling" of 2% in that one JV isn't what happened at all. Now that said, I still think our scope, pre TA and post TA, is lacking in that area. I'm not against international JV's, and honestly you'd have to be an idiot to think a US airline could fly the globe like its 1960 with no foreign partners. Not going to happen, not now not ever again. JV's are vital. But they need to be structured to protect our side of them. The TA scope makes more improvements in that area than it gives up. But we still have way more work to do.

The jumbo RJ growth was smacked down, and SEA was at least protected from future non Alaska poaching. That was more a tying up of a loose end so it couldn't bite us later than it was a current scope improvement, but every little bit helps.

DL my friend. But you already knew that.

You wanna fly DL code? You have to be in compliance with the DALPA PWA. End of story.

SKYW is perfectly free to go it alone, like IndyAir, and fly whatever they want wherever they want to their heart's content. But if they want to fly DL code, they may only do so IAW the DALPA PWA. There is no other way for them or anyone else to fly the code, because all DL code flown is subject to the DALPA PWA. DALPA chooses to allow some of that to be outsourced, so if you would like to bid on some of that flying that is permitted, you may respond to the next RFP and if you are selected you may then fly it IAW our restrictions.

I actually do see what you're trying to do. You're venturing deep into sophistry in order to head fake profundity on the issue. DL pilots own the code, period. Now, does that mean we own the letters D and L and no one else can use them in the alphabet together in any context? Well gee I guess you got me there. :roll eyes:

You want to fly DL code, you must do it IAW the DALPA pilot agreement. Period. We do allow some of it to be outsourced, and IMO too much. But that is our choice.