Because our scope clause was crafted to limit the number and capability of the aircraft that are allowed to be flown by pilots not on the United seniority list. Our scope clause is almost identical to our primary competitor, Delta's and far more lenient than Southwest's. Nothing is more critical to pilot job security and putting money in pilots' pockets than scope. If you have any doubt check out how airline pilots are doing at foreign carriers.

 

Regional pilots are operating smaller equipment making $220/hr. At that price, mainline pilots can too...

 

Does not answer the question I posed. How does the take off weights on the 550 impact your job security? And as far as putting money in your pockets, these types of things actually keep money out of your pocket. If mainline pilots cannot do it for a profit, then you have two options. Don't do it at all and lose out completely, or have it done at a lower cost which generates revenue for the mainline carrier, which puts money in your pocket.

 

Myopic thinking. Pay rates are a drop in the bucket compared to overall operating cost per seat mile.

 

regional operating cost per seat mile is high now.

 

That is true, but that is an industry wide situation that is not unique to the regional model.

 

No, they don't. See UAL just started making something close to what Delta is making and they already are spending $1.5B of it on share repurchases. What does put more money in our pockets is mainline growth and the pormotions and upgrades that come with it.

United and Delta are shockingly finding using more mainline aircraft with more amenities, more seats for basic economy and with no change fees that they are pulling passengers from the ULCCs, LCCs and P2P carriers. They are also finding that fewer RJs means better utilization of the precious gates and throughput at our hubs resulting in better operational performance which creates more customer loyalty.

The CRJ-550 is a crap product. Putting it on longer routes will only make it worse on our passengers, and as the cities list posted shows these markets are the least lucrative if not money losers. It is not a coincidence that the network carrier with the weakest scope is the least profitable. That dog simply doesn't hunt.

I get it. You appear to be a Skywest pilot so union scope protections are Greek to you.

 

Oh scope protections are far from Greek to me. What is greek is how you have yet to still explain how the 550 weight limitations are a threat to your pilot group. You are sounding like a politician dancing around a question by throwing out every dart you have in your bag.

 

For one, please provide a case that mainline pilots cannot operate smaller aircraft profitably. Generally, our pay rates increase with aircraft size. It stands to reason that mainline rates for 50 or 76 seat jets would be lower than those of the 737. What, in your opinion, makes the magic line of mainline profitably be drawn below 100 or 120 seats? Where, exactly, is that line?

Regarding your question of takeoff weights on the 550, management came up with the idea for removing seats from 700s to make 550s because they hit the 70/76 seat limit of our scope clause. You now want the union to grant relief on MTOW to allow them to make their end-around decision more profitable? And you think this weight limitation takes money out of your pocket? I'm stunned. Think of all the money "you" could make if we removed scope language altogether! We could do unlimited regional flying and have Skywest perform 100 seat or possibly 737/320 flying at a more profitable level. Heck, think about the profit potential of no restrictions on international revenue/code sharing! We could probably serve "our" passengers more profitably by putting all of them on ANA, Lufthansa, or Air New Zealand.

So again, please back up your claims that our scope clause takes money out of "our" pockets, or that the mainline cannot fly something smaller than a 737 profitably.

 

Au contraire. Reread my posts.

We get it. Skywest is getting 30 550s (19 DAL, 11 UA). Enjoy, but relief isn't coming to either scope clause.