Airline Pilot Central Forums

Airline Pilot Central Forums (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/)

- United (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/united/)

- - CPP (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/united/123417-cpp.html)

IMO, you're right.

Commuter aircraft 30 years ago were Piper Chieftans, Metroliners, Beech 99s, Shorts SDs, Twin Otters, etc.

Small mainline AC then, BAC 111 with 80 seats. DC9 with 80+, F28 with 50-60 seats.

Now? RJs have 70-90 seats. The pressure is still there. They play the long game and when the economy enters the next recession they'll try and take another bite at the apple.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oldmako (Post 2871091)

Agreed. When a future big financial crisis hits the industry someone will end up relaxing scope as a concession and the race to compete with the new sense of normal will begin. If history only repeated itself, we could learn from the past and not keep making the same mistakes.

The response to any asking of scope concessions needs to be this:

If outsourcing more flying truly lowers costs this drastically, why stop at X amount of seats? Why not 100 seats? Why not 200 seats? Why not just outsource all domestic lift to the lowest-bidding regional, all international long-haul lift to the lowest-bidding Star Alliance/OneWorld/SkyTeam carrier, all of who’s contracts become exportable every 5 years. Explain to me why not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by airlinepilot50 (Post 2871053)

It's not surprising to see regional airlines growing into larger and larger aircraft, the goal of mainline management. Wait for the next major airline bankruptcy. Regionals will be flying 737s and A320s.

That’s bad for all of us....but more so for the ones flying them for C-scale.

As somebody stuck at the stepping stone for well over a decade.....I’ll never vote for scope relief. Ever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glenn Would (Post 2871169)

I personally think you are correct.
“They” only wish to sell tickets and spend as little as possible providing the product. If they could figure out how, they would have zero pilots ( and probably any other employees for that matter). All the planes would be flown by “Pilots R Us” temp staffing. No fuss, minimal cost, no long term liabilities, no insurance, etc.
Wall Street would reward them handsomely. The CEO who figured out how to do it would get his picture on the cover of Time. Or at least Forbes or The National Review.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glenn Would (Post 2871169)

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Ever wonder why UAL had subbed out the flying to Aerlingus out of Dulles? The ultimate goal was to lower the cost of a pilot (ie pilot labor costs) across trans-atlantic routes. If they can get pilots to fly for shamrocks across the pond then they can lower the price of pilots, and therefore lower their networth, and therefore reduce their bargaining power. The two main costs of an airline are labor and fuel. They want to manage, lower, and predict their large costs to the extent possible. If airline X lowers labor costs across specific routes then airlines Y and Z will face pressure to do so as well.

One of the big reasons for the UAL-CAL merger was to abrogate scope of CAL pilots. UAL assumed the Aerlingus wetlease program would continue and hoped that it would expand. IMHO, the negotiators did a good job at holding the line there and good on them for giving the Aerlingus pilots the boot off of our metal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oldmako (Post 2870907)

Oh barf.

I spent a few years, well over a decade actually toiling as a commuter dog for American (Pre-merge) Piedmont (pre-merge) and then Usair. They all sucked. Any commuter dog with a bad attitude has likely earned it. The mainlines used regional feed to squash ALPA and for little else. Yes, it allowed them to suck up fares from cities like Kinston, Ithaca, Lynchburg, Moline, Baton Rouge, and Groton. But, feed was more of a cudgel than anything else. At least, that's how it looked to me. And after I took my eye off of that ball, it was shoved up my evac tube shortly after 911, just so I could reacquaint myself with reality and go back to being a commuter dog. Well, Foxtrot that.

Bad attitudes prevail because thousands of pilots who have spent a TON of money and time to get the quals are jammed into lousy spots, making lousy wages, with lousy support. And, they get treated like a big bag of offal! I cannot imagine that there is any real difference at any of them. You're there to build time and they know it. That will be used against you.

You pay a guy slave wages to fly a multi-million RJ a ton of hours over the course of a year and you think he's going to show up GQ spiffy every day? You're delusional. We used to have rolling mandatory junior man... they'd nail you at the end of a trip to fly tomorrow on your day off, your vacation even. Well, what attitude shall I bring to work on my vacation? Shall I press my slacks? I'm not talking once or twice annually, try most of the summer at the least. WHY should they care about how it reflects on U? They don't work for U. They work for peanuts.

Top-quality costs money. And money flows uphill in this industry, not down.

True Dat!

Lots of dudes and dudets paid some serious dues at the minors waiting to be called up to the majors. The farm leagues that provide real-time service for the major airlines need to be shown a little love. The carrot and stick (mostly stick) of the 90's and the post 9-11 era isn't understood by management. It's not properly understood and to make my point, I introduced Oscar to my FO one day. I said, have you met "Bob"? He's 43 years old and has spent 17 years at the regionals. If we can't provide a reasonable return on Bob's investment into his career then how can we expect Bob to have any love and loyalty to UAL? Any more than 4 years at a commuter is cruel and unusual punishment and should go down as unnecessary pain and suffering.

Oscar didn't get it. Oscar... This dude is 2 years younger than me, and I've been a Captain here for over 10 years. Hello.... You can't complain about a so-called pilot shortage when you're doing everything possible to de-incentivize the profession and the career path.

Quote:

Originally Posted by baseball (Post 2871521)

As a regional captain I had Oscar on board once and after being contacted by my companies dispatch and the base administrator at the departure city explaining the importance of our performance for that flight, I still couldn't explain to my crew what we would do differently from what we had done on the four prior legs