Because it isn’t. They were willing to die on the hill to avoid it.

 

But yet seemed to have survived…I cant find anything deadly

 

They gave up the scope that they had, basically put the weight of protecting scope onto the shoulders of the pilot group, they now have to credit 480hrs/year to get health insurance and they now have electronic notification through their link. If this passes. A few other giveaways, but yeah, nothing deadly.

 

What are the gains?

 

hourly rates, sit pay, boarding pay

 

As well as some hotel language, meal provisions, and redeye language.

 

A quick glance at Reddit posts shows a lot of people are not thrilled with it but they'll vote yes.

Good luck to everyone at United.

 

Perhaps I’m reading it wrong, but it looks like it has biz class D/H as well.

 

They didn't give up scope, they strengthened their language. The only change was to allow UA to have a wholly-owned regional, but their scope was agnostic as to regional flying. The verbiage in their current JCBA prohibits any company that UAL Inc. has a controlling interest in from operating without UA flight attendants. This currently prohibits a wholly-owned regional because it would require UA flight attendants. It doesn't prohibit or limit that flying from being done by non wholly-owned regionals like YX and OO operating under CPAs.

The language they secured in TA2 ties their scope to the pilots'. The existing LOA plausibly could allow what the AFA is calling a "damp lease," where a UA plane operated by UA pilots was flown with non-UA FAs. This language closes that loophole. All in all, I actually think this is a textbook example of how negotiations can benefit both parties. UA gets the flexibility to run their regional operation how they want and the FAs get a guarantee they're not going to get squeezed out of any flight operated by a UA aircraft.

The 480/year is a big nothing burger for nearly every FA on property. I get that, strictly-speaking it's a concession, but anybody who is intending to work will not have an issue with that since plenty of types of leave count toward it, including sick and FMLA. It's entirely designed to protect against FAs that drop their schedule, never work, but retain full company benefits. In so doing, they're probably making costs cheaper (not that I'd expect that to get passed on to the employees, except indirectly through profit sharing).

The electronic notification thing is also really not a big deal. Arguably, it prevents flight attendants from having to call, often sitting on hold for hours during IROPS. If the company wants to get ahold of you, they will. I use to play the jump through hoops game at the regionals, but there's no reason to do it here.

So all in all, it's hard to argue that what they "gave up" is really of consequence. These won't be negatives to 99.5% of the FAs on property.

To think what could've been if they'd been willing to negotiate PBS during a non-concessionary environment. I guarantee the company will not allow another round of negotiations to go by without it so it would've likely benefitted them to extract as much value for it as they could have now rather than taking their chances on what the environment will look like in 5 years.

 

Thoughts on this??

https://airlinegeeks.com/2026/04/06/...ional-airline/