Quote:
Originally Posted by UALinIAH
This I agree. As far as regional lift goes, you guys have been as reliable as they come and I’ve had nothing but professionalism on my JS and been treated the same (still wish you guys would join ALPA but that’s another story for another thread) But at the end of the day, on United routes and flying planes with United Express trying to demand who gets gets on in what order (after your own people, nobody is even dreaming of changing that) who do you think controls the seats?
Yes the captain will always get final say. If he wants to go rouge that’s fine, we’ll pass his name on to ALPA and let UAL buy us a ticket and bump someone or just catch the next flight. UAL owns every seat already. Our commuter clause is pretty nice. It won’t interrupt UAL mainline operations. Will Skywest pay UAL to get you to work?
I'd love for SkyWest to go ALPA, but it isn't going to happen. Too many that have had bad experiences with unions during the economic downturn and too many that are lifers and super comfortable with what they have.
@You and Kent, I'd argue that SkyWest (and Republic, I don't know much about Mesa's status) have fairly strong negotiating/leverage capital, depending on where they want to spend it. Let me pull some quotes and numbers from the most recent United annual SEC filing:
Context (This snippet is part of a section talking about risks)
"Although the Company has agreements with its regional carriers that include contractually agreed performance metrics, each regional carrier is a separately certificated commercial air carrier and the Company does not control the operations of these carriers."
Regarding aircaft owned, could United simply take planes away and source labor from another airline? Lets look:
Embraer 175: 154 operated, of which United owns 54. The 175 is operated by three UAX carriers: SkyWest, Republic, and Mesa.
Embraer 170: Of the 38 operated, United owns 0. All owned or leased by Republic.
This is the 2018 10-K, so it doesn't include recent changes, in the case ExpressJet entering into 175 operations and other fleet changes. If United were to somehow pull all Embraer flights from the three airlines resisting the jumpseat changes, the only operator with a training program and FAA approval to operate these aircraft is Expressjet. They neither have the labor to operate these, nor the aircraft (again, most of these aircraft aren't owned by United).
Lets look at the CRJ:
CRJ 700: 64 operated, United owns none. Gojet operates 25, the rest are SkyWest and Mesa
Crj 200: 128 operated, United owns none. 60 are operated by SkyWest, the rest are Air Wisconsin and Expressjet.
E145: Ew
But in all seriousness, none of "the three" operate these. Mostly operated by ExpressJet.
In total, 52% of United's regional aircraft are operated by SkyWest, Republic, and Mesa.
What does this all mean? Sure, long haul United could shift more of their operations from the three carriers not participating in the jumpseat agreement to their smaller carriers. Frankly, it appears to me that United has already been taking steps to better balance their regional dependence between more airlines, with less flying at each. However, it isn't feasible in the short term. This would be an incredible feat, with an incredible financial hit on United to match. They'd have to fund all of these fleet transitions, recruitment, training, aircraft aquisitions, etc. as there is no way in hell that GoJet, ExpressJet, Commutair, and TSA could in their current states.
I wrote this after 1 am because I can't sleep, hope its coherent