Well, for one, you're bashing regional pilots for the sins committed by the mainline. I know you're one of them now, and congrats for making it out. Not all of us are that lucky, or have even had a chance yet.
I just find it amusing that once somebody gets a mainline job, they call out their former brethren -- like it's my fault we're flying around a 900.
If you did a survey of the ASA pilot group, I think you'd find all but the lifers would prefer to see the airplane at the majors. But we peons just take what we're given.
Maybe you should direct your anger at the more senior members of the DL/NW pilot group. After all, they are the ones that created the situation that we're in.
I was, in no way, bashing regional pilots as a group. If it came across that way, it was unintended. The people I do have utmost disdain for are the regional pilots who see a new airframe like the -900 come along and salivate at the opportunities it brings.
I'll try to make myself as clear as I can at 2:30 in the morning.... I fault the MECs of DAL and NWA for giving away scope time and time again. I fault the structure of ALPA, which seems to lean heavily to the will of the widebody Captain who is, at best, uneducated about the implications of scope and, at worst, just does not care. The outsourcing problems we are facing now are, without a doubt, the fault of the mainline unions who either saw small jet flying as something that was beneath them or as something that was not worth expending valuable negotiating capital fighting for. That was all in place long before I and my peers got a mainline seniority number.
What's done is done. I have directed my anger at my LEC chairman and my MEC chairman. Many of my co-workers have done the same. I feel like the message is, finally, getting through. Those airplanes belong at mainline, flying under mainline payscales and mainline work rules, and thus creating more mainline (read, higher paying) jobs.
I have no disdain or hatred for a pilot who goes to work for a regional carrier finding him or herself in the right seat of a CRJ-900 flying formerly mainline route. We all have families to feed or house payments to make. What I absolutely can not stomach is the sense of entitlement that some of these lucky few that end up in the "9" seem to carry with them.
Whatever... it's no important.... ALPA dropped the ball years ago.
