Chicken wagging the egg, etc.
Sig said:
I think I follow, then I think I'm confused. Since I'm a moron to begin with, I want to know what you're thinking...
Do you mean the mainline at large pulls the strings with ALPA because of their higher wages, and therefore cut and snip flying to their best accord?? Or is it that a regional carrier is de facto an expendible group of constituents, and therefore the firstest to the altar when cuts need to be made regardless of their utility domain (they're lesser, therefore sihtty?). Heck, I could have made this easy- does the tail wag the dog?
I think it all started with the so called "jet age" in commercial aviation. Once everyone was flying the big iron, farming out little bitty turboprops became an issue of significance as well as cost. Pilot groups could have cared less, and management just wanted a little cheap feed to tiny towns where the big jets weren't going to go.
Then came the roaring late 90's and the RJ. Sure it started in the early 90's when things were relatively tough, but scope clauses were written thinking number of seats were paramount, so the new 50 seaters kinda snuck in. By the time it became an issue, things were booming like never before. Who cares is you outsource 500 barbie jets when you're hiring 60 a month into your big thick mainline vessels?
To placate the voices in the crowd who seemed to be getting alarmed, management agrees to restrictions and ratios. Like, "don't worry guys, these barbie jets can't fly between your hubs!" [like that's some sort of protection] and better yet, "give us more RJ's and we'll grow mainline, so you see, its in your best interest to sign off on more and more and more and more." 10 years after it began, the RJ revolution had grown to almost half of the block hours of mainline system flying. Not half the seat miles mind you, but half the jobs of the booming 90's had already been outsourced.
There is some truth to the statement that mainline pilots and ALPA want high priced feed. I'm sure on some level they do. If the regionals (sorry...commuters?) one day got so expensive that management came begging mainline pilot groups to take the flying back at linear pay scales, recalling all their furloughs and hiring 60 a month again, I'm sure ALPA would love it but we all know that's never going to happen.
But this outsourcing cancer which may have started as an innocent "hey let us subcontract some 19-30 seat props to fly to Maybury and back" in a short decade had become 300-500+ jets (depending on the legacy) outsourced to the lowest bidder, getting bigger and bigger jets with fewer and fewer restrictions and less and less of the mighty fleet ratios.
Now scope negotiations are merely an issue of how much are you going to give up this round to save something else for a little while, hopefuly long enough so you can retire. The only issue is how much bargaining credit the legacy pilot groups are going to recieve for this round's woerth of scope loosening. More 50 seaters to save the widebody rates. More 70 seaters so the inevitable pay cuts will maybe be smaller than otherwise. 76 seaters to hold on to a snowball's chance of keeping the retirement alive. Now farming out flying is a stopgap measure of temporary survival for the senior pilots at the legacies.
Expensive feed would screw up ALPA's whole collective bargaining model at this point. And just to make sure it doesn't happen accidentaly, management has pitted dozens of regional (commuter?) pilot groups against one another within each legacy system to keep wages low forever unless a major unified stance (above and beyond ALPA) happens, and that's not likely. The legacies have the power to change things, but it will entail additional sacrifices and they think they have bigger fish to fry so they won't do it. Look for unlimited 76/78 seaters everywhere soon, and unlimited 100 seaters (or bigger) in less than 10 years. The regionals (and cummuters, too?) are all in a position to directly benefit from anyone else who takes said stand, but they won't for that very reason.
I hope that answers your question Sig, from one moron to another! Good luck at Mesaba if that's where you're at. I feel bad for those guys and hope they can turn things around, but without a unified stance (that I don't see happening) I can't see how its possible.
On the bright side, think of how big of a bargaining credit the legacy pilots can get if they allow Mesa and dirtbag GJ to underbid eachother for unlimited 100 seaters! They can't fly between hubs for a few months of course. Gotta make it tough on management you know! Gotta love ALPA.