shon7 said:
How will the changes to the workrules and new (reduced) payscales at the Majors have an affect on workrules and payscales at the regionals? Will it just be a domino effect -- because I really can't see FO's at regionals making any less.
What about flight instructors? How do you perceive they will be affected by these changes?
I know I am going to catch heat on this one.....but a large part of the reason that the majors are in trouble is the contracting and outsourcing of mainline routes and their brand.
As long as RJ's exist on a seperate senority list, while flying in the parent company colors. Management will continue to use them to drag down payscales and benefits. RJ's cannot survive on thier own without the mainlines name, and most of the mainlines cannot survive without the feed. (SWA and Jblue) bieng the exceptions.
Independance Air has been around for years and years, but the general public does not know it, even some of the young pilots that I meet do not know it. When they were with UAL, they were "UAL" as far as the flying public was concerned.
The mistake was made in the early 70's by letting those first few commuters fly Beech 99's and Shorts in mainline colors. It has been a steady completely forseeable downslide since then. What the founding MEC's missed, or failed to believe, was that anyone would ever let a jet fly on a commuter codeshare. When you look at the history of the founding fathers of this mess (USAir-then Allegheny, and Eastern) The reason the commuters started was the airplanes were needed to feed the small airports that the DC-9's and Bac 1-11's (The loinshare of the short haul jets at the time) could not fly into due to runway length. When it happened at USAir, if you talk to the very senior or recently retired pilots that were there at the time. Many did not want any of their flying to leave the property, they could see the threat. Up until that point the short haul was flown on the mainline by CV-580's and similer equipment. But in the end managment "bribed" the unions into letting it happen. After all, every pilot that was flying the 580's on mainline were going to be Jet pilots as soon as the mainline could get rid of this "Garbage feed flying" Sounds eerily like what was used on the Turboprop Dash-8 and Saab drivers of today. "Take this crappy pay scale, and you get to fly a jet!!"
We, as pilots, let it become the mess it is now, By letting any flying be done in mainline colors that is not flown by mainline senority lists, we have caused the problem that now makes us enemies in the same uniform. We are all guilty of it. I flew at a Wholly owned regional, and at a Mainline. I am guilty of it on both sides of the fence. First by taking a regional job, and second by not being able to stop the further outsourcing once at mainline. (The bottom third of the list tried to make sure that all RJ's in the future went to the W/O's, we were out voted, and this fact is forgotton or unknown by the enemy in our uniform.) Our thought was that if we could get all the RJ's on the property, we would then have a fighting chance of getting all the flying done in our airlines name, to actually be done by our senority list. The thought was to get all the group pilots merged onto one list. As it stands, we got the superbone from management , largly due to the senior guys being terrified of bieng out of a job in their mid 50's, and now we have a Major airline mainline flying as its own alter ego on the very same 121 certificate as its parent (MDA) Two senority lists on one certificate!!!! A violation of one of the founding principles of ALPA. Personally I think that this was the suicide bullet of ALPA, it is only a matter of time before they finish bleeding out.
Can you blame the guy flying the RJ? No. How about the mainline guy trying to finish up a 30 years career? No. We all caused and feed the disease. The only way to fix it is to rid ourselves of 12 companies bieng able to fly in the same paint job. And the only way to do it is a full shutdown of the airline industry until it is agreed upon, which will never happen. As it stands, if managment is getting too much grief from one group(airline).........just hire another group to replace them.(Another airline) The passengers never know the difference........after all, its all UAL, USair,DAL,NWA,AA, right?
So to conclude, yes we will see the continued decline of this profession to that of a bus driver or fastfood manager. As long as we continue to move the metal for declining conditions, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
