you spent paragraph after paragraph trying to convince me...that airlines like JetBlue had NOTHING to do with the collapse of wages, work rules, and retirement at the legacy carriers.
At the end I asked you a simple question: If you don't feel that airlines such as JetBlue, AirTran, and Frontier and their ultra low wages and wages that were 50% less than the going rate as they existed in the early 00's, were largely responsible for the decline of pay, work rules, and retirement of the typical airline pilot, then why are you worried about cabotage?
And frankly, when I skim what you write, and you're trying to justify your PATHETIC E190 100 seat 737/DC9 by comparing your E190 rates to an outsourced 50 or 70 seat RJ rate ("and planes extremely close to its size" UFB), I see that you are still lost, and we will never agree.
Yeah I guess we both tent to get a bit long winded, but hey, we gotta give our fans their 10 bucks worth right?
imp:
Anyway I will also try not to rehash everything, but I wanted to answer your questions.
First I'm going to agree with you about what I think was your main point, but then totally ruin the moment by agreeing with it only on a technicality.
Did JetBlue (and the infamous "JetBlues of the world") have
anything to do with the wages you ended up getting? Sure. However, so did all the airlines that took cuts, which was basically all of them except Delta for the first 3 years of the last downturn, and then they too also took cuts, but I guess all that was okay because some airlines were here first. Seniority realy is everything. There is no scenario immaginable that would have prevented negative wage pressure from new start up airlines during a massive downturn other than 100% iron clad pro big 6 regulation. That's not a reality and is therefore irrelevant.
If after 9-11 happened, it became illegal for any airline other than the big 6 to fly domestic passengers, the cuts probably wouldn't have been as deep. So in that respect you are right. However, if you add up every single LCC at the time, the ASM's in their entirety were microscopic compared to the footprints of the legacy airlines and that's my point. Was there a JetBlue effect to your negotiations? Sure. But it was 1/100th (okay, maybe 5/100th's?) but you can't ignore the economies of scale here. If JB had an effect, are you saying it would make no difference if JB had 1 plane or 500 planes like SWA? Of course it makes a massive difference.
So for you to claim that JetBlue (and the JetBlue's of the world) contributed to the subsequent post 9-11 pay paradigm is both technically correct (they did) and extremely over emphasised (the percentage of the effect that can be attributed to them is much smaller than you are asserting).
And besides that, if JB was paying your pre concession wages and work rules at that time and was still very profitable, you still would have had to take deep cuts because your company was reeling from a general recession and an aviation depression. We all talk tough about "full pay til the last day" or "not one nickle, not one job" because talk is cheap, and while we as a profession can and do from time to time make our airlines bleed as punishment for being treated unfairly, when we are actually faced with a choice of liquidation or concessions, we as a profession almost always choose concessions.
Likewise, if JB (and all the JBOTW's) were paying half what they were at that time, but ALL the other Legacy airlines had managed to avoid cuts, you would have not had to take anywhere near as deep cuts, though you still would have had to give some. Again, its a matter of degree and the JB effect on nationwide wage pressures was miniscule compared to what you are making it out to be.
Now as to why I worry about Cabotage. Its not so much the Air China's and Mexicana's I worry about right now. Its the Lufthansas, British Airways, Air France's and KLM's of the world. And I worry about them not because of their low pilot labor costs. Quite the contrary. I worry about them because if we ever truly get 100% open skies (cabotage) there will be so much competition all at once from established existing infrastructures our US pilot labor force may collapse. Oh I forgot, we can fight over a few scraps at the almighty LHR like that's somehow worth it. To me cabotage is a basic issue of national soveriegnty. I don't care if the intruding airline has lower, equal or significantly higher labor costs, I don't want it here and believe its our duty as a nation to protect some basic level of industry and infrasctructure. I am pro competition, but anti giving away the store to foreigners. Pilot labor costs should be our national issue that we work out as US workers on a level playing field. There is no reason to give away another domestic industry to other nations.
And once again regarding the 190. You can not claim the 190 is a 737 but say the 170/175/CRJ700/CRJ705/CRJ900/CRJ1000 is "just an RJ". Further more, the cancerous proliferation of jets larger than 50 seats was 100% the fault of legacy pilot groups and no one else, and the vast majority of that "permitted outsourcing" came outside of bankruptcy in acts of pure ignorance, stupidity, arrogance and greed.
You can't give your management the right to outsource the 170 (and bigger) aircraft at any price with no floor, to union and non union shops alike, and then act high and mighty about how 190 rates should be so much higher. If management could convince Boeing to take a plug out of your 500's and make it seat as many as a large CRJ or 170/175 are
certified to seat, would you allow it to be outsourced for current RJ rates? Its the exact same thing. You have a rabid new MEC (supposedly) and CAL isholding fast to 50 seat scope and AA is pushing for 100% scope. Where is the UAUA pilot's position? To me without scope nothing else matters. I'd even call it a "full pay til the last day" non negotiable item.
