when I was at JetBlue, ltd was 100% company paid up to $13k and was also tax free. So company can pay it all and it still be tax free. They also could up it to $15k by paying the difference and buy a short term plan that started at 7 days.

 

Yeah but when you start shrinking big planes to smaller, they don't get lighter by the same percentage of seats you took out. It would be extremely difficult to create a 50 seat E175 that would fit under the 65,000lb MTOW limit in the UPA and still have range comparable to a CRJ700 or E175.

Wow I had no idea...

So instead of recapturing the less than two hour flights with A319s, you want to lose MORE of those longer routes to bigger RJs...? because that's the argument you're making here.

1. Who's gonna fly that clean sheet 50 seat turboprop? Can't even find people to fly the 50 seat jets. Can barely find mechanics to keep them running these days either.
2. Who says that SBN-ORD 5x a day on a CRJ2 can't be replaced by SBN-ORD 2x a day on an A319? Or they could do what they do in DEN and just switch it to a bus. Either of those would free up a lot of space in ORD and save a lot of money on fuel/labor.

The issue here is that you don't want to lose MORE routes to RJs like the 175 with longer (3-4) range... but for some reason you're arguing that it's actually a good idea to let them have more 175s to do this.

 

Im told that there will be no major changes to scope, but major work rule improvements.

 

We're not losing routes to the 175. Exactly the opposite is happening. 175s are getting parked (Mesa) because there aren't enough pilots to fly them. The reason you see a 175 on a DEN-RIC turn is not because the 175 is so much cheaper to operate, its because mainline doesn't have a spare A/C. 175s will take over 50 seat routes and mainline will take over 76 seat routes. This has already been happening.

 

No need to get so hostile amigo, I’m just pointing out a different perspective on it. Maybe there will be no 50 seat jets in 20 years and the residents of Lincoln, NE or South Bend, IN will be satisfied with once or twice a day 319 service, you’ll be totally right and it would’ve been stupid to worry about them. Maybe someone else starts running 6x a day service on a whisper quiet fuel efficient turboprop with legroom and all of a sudden 200 fifty seat aircraft are now being flown by express pilots because scope didn’t get tightened. I personally think any reduction in total frames is a good outcome. You don’t, for solid reasons. Hope you all get a great contract either way.

cheers

 

If that's true, and 175 will take over 50 seat routes as 50 seaters go away, why should scope be relaxed to allow more 175s? Still not a win for UA pilots...

Those extra 175s could later be used to take mainline routes if the economy tanks too.

Allowing more 76 seaters is not a win in either case.

 

Times seem pretty good at the moment. They won't be good indefinitely.

 

Amazing how quickly people forget how fast things can go south. It's like they were asleep for all of 2020.

 

It is not a win, but it's not a loss either. The total footprint of UAX gets smaller and we continue to serve smaller cities, or we do as you say and maintain current E175 cap and pull out of more markets simply because we don't have the resources to fly them ourselves.

 

The former solution you offered trades the short range 50 seat planes serving the small cities for long range 76 planes that may or may not be used to fly to those small cities.

The latter is the clear solution. It's a management problem. You're not management. You're a pilot. Stop trying to help them.

What happens when you give management the 76 seat planes that they want in exchange for 2x 50 seat planes being removed? Management goes and replaces those 50 seat planes with bus service like they already operate in DEN. That's what happens. Then they use the extra 76 seat planes that you gave them to do stuff that should be done by a mainline A220, E190, or A319. That right there is a quantifiable loss for UA pilots.