Not to distract from the lively thread derailment, but did anything interesting come out of the "Earnings Live" event today? I was able to listen in for the Q&A only and it seemed like a pretty mundane/typical Town Hall kind of session. No announcements about uniforms, livery, or fleet?

To speak the plain truth, it's getting pretty damn dull around here...

 

Stuck to their guns on the growth plan-basically reiterated that Wall street has a myopic viewpoint -and listening to that caused United to be in the position they’re in. Shrinking to profitability doesn’t work in the long term.
Reaffirmed the 737 as the backbone of the narrow body fleet.
Gave the same spiel about the mistakes of competing against the other 2 airlines with RJs instead of mainline.
It was good information, but stuff that we should know if we paid attention this week.
Revenue increased, but so did costs -significantly-which explains the profit sharing a little.
Kirby reiterated the need to take care of the internal customer as well-specifically, a scheduler asked about not wanting to make pilots mad 😂.
I feel good about the direction-but I will vote no for ANY scope relaxation.

 

While I admire your vision and share some of your reason, the reality is that E175's will still be flying 20 years from now. If you really believe that the company and the union will somehow decide to bring all of those airplanes over to mainline, well that's awesome too.

Time's do change, and WAG'ing about the future is a poor life strategy as well.

Also, Uber and Lyft are taxis. So taxis are still incredibly necessary.
A huge number of them driven by former taxi drivers. How does that relate to mainline farming out flying to regional airlines for cheaper costs? Why would airlines suddenly decide to pay A319 crews to do TUS-DEN when they can pay E175 crews less than half to provide the exact same level of service?
Yeah, 50 seat RJ's are eventually going to be negligible (still 10+ years away and flown by regionals) but if you think all of that 76 feed is all coming back within the next 20 years, I have a sweet beach house to sell you.

 

So Kirby thinks scope relief is a zero cost item because the pilots will recognize the need for cost effective feed...
Even going as far as to verify that RJ's were misused by his predecessors and that the pilots were right when complaining about routes such as EWR-ATL being flown by RJ's....

He is right about it being zero cost because the pilots can't take a chance on negotiating regardless of his reassurances. Contracts last their duration while managers come and go...Next week/month/year the names will change and instead of Kirby/Munoz it could feel a lot like Tilton/Smisek/Lorenzo...

If they want smaller jets, buy them and place a UAL pilot making UAL wages in the cockpit....

 

First of all, its not 1/2 the cost. Second of all, its not the “exact same service”. Nobody would rather fly on an RJ than a mainline jet. Oscar even said it on CNBC. He said passengers rejected RJs and left for other carriers. Pilot costs are only 8% of the total operation, so paying a pilot a little less doesn’t really change the cost that much. We could easily do what SK wants to do with the guppy 700s they canceled.

 

You're right, it's less than 1/2 the cost.
73-8 Crew: CA ~$250/hr FO ~$150/hr
E175 Crew: CA~ $90/hr FO~$45

I'll let you do that math.
I've heard countless pax say they like that E175 better than a 73. Sorry, I'm on the same side, but I'm also a realist. You are correct, it could be done with guppys, but the pilot group and the company will never get that totally figured out. We've all read about what SK wants.
We can hate it all we want. The regional jets are here to stay, and we all are to blame.

I'll eat all the crow you can barbecue when the 76 seat jets are on the mainline property.

 

You do realize a 737-800 carries more people than an E175 right? I don’t trust you to do the math, so I’ll do it for you.

Using your numbers:

$400 / 166 seats = $2.41/seat/hr

$135 / 76 seats = $1.78/seat/hr

$1.78 / $2.41 = 74%

The cost for pilots on a 76 seat RJ is 74% of the cost of a 737-800. Well over half.

Are you that daft or just bad at solving logic problems?



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You guys are arguing over 2% of the total picture. What I want to see is the CASM of an E175 on mainline vs an E175 at a regional.

Fuel, acquisition, maint requirements are the same no matter where it’s flown. If the determining factor of the profitability is the cost of the crew, then it’s a fundamentally flawed airplane.

If UAL could get our pilot productivity up to 7 hours a day ala SWA, at current UPA rates, I can’t see how it doesn’t work. United Shuttle was wildly successful (and popular) with the shuttle crews making slightly less than the mainline guys, with higher productivity (giving them pay parity). I’ve yet to fly with a LUAL guy who didn’t love the Shuttle flying. Bring the 175 to mainline and turn it back on, I’d do it!

 

Ok, Kirby might get it, but he's gonna have to deposit 3 million in everyone's retirement fund then. Otherwise, he aint gonna get it.

He can't buy ALPA for one simple reason. ALPA has found itself in a lose-lose situation. ALPA represents regionals and mainline carriers. ALPA has representational responsibilities to both big and small carriers mainline and regionals...

You have some diamaterically opposed issues and maybe a conflict of interest.....

Regional wants more jobs: ALPA has to say fine, lets do that, but those carriers want to pay less to offer more jobs. ALPA has to say NO to lower wages. Regional pilots make less, therefore ALPA has to uphold the standard for the benefit of the profession.

Mainline carriers want to use more regionals because their labor is cheaper. Again, ALPA has to tread carefully. ALPA knows the long term benefit of the career and progression is to keep the pay up and therefore can't allow mission-creep to continue to expand the regionals role and capacity.

Regional pilots want new contracts just like mainline carriers do. ALPA dues money is insufficient from the regionals, therefore it uses mainline dues to subsidize contract maintenance and negotiations. This is the biggest conflict of interest there is. Mainline pilots can't allow mainline dues money to be used against mainline careers. Therefore to minimize the conflict, gotta keep the regionals in perspective, and that means enhancing scope, not minimizing it. It's in ALPA's short term and long term self (financial) interest to enhance scope. More pilots, making more money means more dues for ALPA.

I used to think it would be wise to spin off the regionals and form a regional pilot association. Not any longer....I think better to have a strong ALPA, with strong leadership pushing the regional airlines and their management teams in the right direction while simultaneously enforcing and increasing scope protections for mainline pilots.

 

Exactly, pilot pay disparity is a drop in the bucket.


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