Pay does not matter. Staple regardless.
Pay can be negotiated later. This is a one-time opportunity to expand mainline by adding a fleet of 36 airplanes.
If Compass pilots were to get furloughed after being stapled then so be it. It would be the same as being furloughed due to flowbacks anyway.
Former Northwest and Delta pilots would be much better off being bumped down to an E-175 on their own airline than flowing back because the work rules would be better, EVEN IF the Compass pay scale was the starting pay scale after a staple.
Management would have more options regarding fleet size changes with the E-175 at mainline. The flowthrough and flowback is very expensive. Backwards it means having mainline guys waiting up to a year or year and a half to get their flowback spot (what do they do during that time, stay at mainline? mainline would already be overstaffed). Going forwards, that is to say, flowing up, it is expensive because one training event is paid for by Delta for the Compass pilot at mainline new-hire class, and one new Compass pilot must be hired to fill that spot. If the E-175 fleet was at mainline, there would not be that double-training-event predicament in times of hiring.
Mainline pilots concerned about hiring standards at Compass should not be overly concerned (though it is a legitimate question).
Compass does perform the same medical that NWA did for new hires.
Compass had all interviewees do a sim evaluation with a former NWA pilot in the sim.
Each interview was comprised of one Compass HR rep and two former NWA pilots.
The first ~180 pilots hired easily would have been competitive for an interview at NWA or Delta. Nearly all of them were captains at other 121 carriers looking to move to MSP/DTW/MEM.
The second half of the list, numbers ~180 to 330 are a mix. Some were FOs at places like Air Wisconsin, ExpressJet, and others that furloughed.
About HALF of the bottom half of the list, that is to say, 25% of the total pilot group, were formerly pilots at ATA, Aloha, SkyWay, Midwest, DHL, and others that went out of business. Not uncommon to have a 20,000 hour ATA 757 captain type of pilot in the last few Compass classes.
The opportunity to staple this fleet to mainline will only come around once, and that time is now.
There are no disadvantages to mainline pilots that I can think of.
The following layovers would increase or return to mainline:
MSO seasonally
FCA
EWR (12+ hours means Manhattan in the JPWA right?)
PHL
BOS
PHX
BIL seasonally
JAX (seems to be a ton of commuters who could constantly have layovers at home again)
YYZ
I could go on and on.