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Regional Pilots..this is it

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PBR "StreetGang" Love the name

I wonder if many others here know the origin.

"50 cal, 50cal!!....Were takin' fire from the treeline..."

Napalm in the trees....next baby. That flick acutally brainwashed me to go into US Army aviation. I miss it.

Sorry This wasn't realated to the post. It's good to take a break in a heated thread everyonce in awhile.

Crap on the greedy Airline mgmt!! Those bastages!!!
 
Hey MAK
I quess you builded you "Turbine Time" in the "military"
did you surpass the regionals , straight to the majors?
I believe you should start thanking everybody in this board
for their contribution to your flight "turbine time! Get it!
Fly safe!
 
PBR...

i've been sitting here for the last 15 minutes going over and over in my head if that was from the movie...i was pretty sure it was...i almost wrote "pbr" until i saw your post ch47. and yeah, it almost brainwashed me too...what a wakeup i got!

i've seen "redux" and to be honest i didn't see what the big deal was. i felt the shorter version was better, more streamlined. anyone else agree?
 
Good idea Focker.

But how do you get the management to sign off on the idea of integrating the seniority lists? APA tried it at AMR, and they got laughed out of the building...
 
Well, it won't be easy.

Freightdog,
I know, it also came up when in the Delta/Comair relations a few years back. Same result. As you can imagine most of the Comair guys would go to the bottom of the Delta list, which makes Delta happy. There's enough fairly senior guys who wouldn't go for it without integration of some kind, Delta not happy. This is a fairly undetailed example, but it's the fundamental problem.

Bottom line: Nobody who gets paid a 40 hr. week to do this has been able to figure it out yet, so I sure don't have the answer.
The Flight Options/ Ratheon merger will be one of the smoother integrations when it's finished, but here you have to similar sized, similar valued companies. And most of all you have two sets of empoyees with similar statures in the aviation world. Equal squirrels after the same nuts. Take Delta/Comair-ASA, very different standing in the airline heirachy. This is why is hasn't happened yet. Even AA/TWA, two "Majors", but a perceived difference in stature, and I thought, the integration reflected it. Someone will argue the difference was financial position of the two companies, but to me, that's how aviation defines stature, it's the same difference. The default thinking of regionals(ok, backup, commuters) who feed majors is very ingrained in my, an everyones mind, and to have them all be one overnight seems to be a concept we aren't ready to snuggle up to........yet.

At 31, I personally believe I'll see it in my aviation career, granted it may be at the end of it. Commuters have evolved to regionals. The increasingly popular 'wholly owned' didn't start as a move toward one seniority list, more to control their unprecedented growth and threat to the 'major'. It makes you scratch your head when all the money goes to the same pot and wonder if there is a better way than shorting yourself with scope laguage, assuming you aren't finding a way to get around it, like we are currently seeing. It's just my opinion, and seems obvious to me there is the chance to be an industry leader here and I believe eventually somebody will think outside the box just enough to take the plunge. The answer isn't easy.
 
RJs are not Nationals/Internationals

There has been some outstanding discussion on this page regarding the issue. Some points to ponder--Regional Jets were intended to be "Regional" Jets. But, some very smart management cookie at the big airlines realized they fly like "big" planes, impress the passengers, are less expensive to operate, and can go fly at nice speeds outside the "region."
Commuter pilots blame the aircraft manufacturers for designing the birds, not some smart airline management employee who simply added up the numbers.
Regional pilot salary scale may soon become the norm in the airline industry, but, you can bet that future airline management is not going to continue to pay the big dollars in the future that they are apying now. Sure, a few pilots will make very good money, but, they will be few, and hope they don't get positions of authority in the pilot unions.
Current and future airline management will not be the "I love aviation and flight crews" of the past. The ivory offices will be occuppied by accounting and financial professionals who won't know a 747 from jet-ranger. Bottom line will be what matters in the future.
On the subject of unions, I am a union member and support labor organizations. But, ALPA is one sided and not for all pilots. A real regional pilots organization is needed to protect the employment rights and the future of regional airline flight crews.
 
I'm still wondering why COMAIR and ASA don't at least attempt to merge. If I've missed something, please feel free to correct me.

Secondly, RJ's are here to stay. Yes, they ARE replacing the mainline in most cases which results in fewer mainline jobs, and that is self-evident in who's hiring and who's furloughing.

Finally, a way to cure this disease is for us, regional folks who aspire to move up the ladder, to keep raising the bar when our contracts come up. Bring it up to par with the mainline. Won't happen overnight, but it's a process and it will be written in "Flying the Line III." Of course the management will not go for it, and yes there will have to be sacrifices made - strikes, potentially losing jobs due to shutting down airlines. No doubt about it, but it is our future.

Let's face it... there are 90 seat and coming up on 110 seat RJ's. The management would absolutely love it if they could give those jets to the regionals. I mean, what's the difference between a 90 seat RJ and a DC-9 or F100? 90 seat RJ is more economical, and if flown by us, WAY cheaper labor.

It's up to us to raise the bar, so should the management want to replace B737/MD80/B717/F100 flying with RJ's, they will pay similar pay to RJ crew.

Personally, I think anything over 50 seats should be flown by the mainline, and this is where a strong scope language comes into play. It's up to the management to decide what airplane gets flown by whom, but bottom line - cheap labor should NOT be a deciding factor. As I said, if we keep raising the bar at the regional level, there will be a lot more talk and receptive attitude about merging at the mainline level than there is now. Currently, we are still a minor league in terms of pay, work rules, retirements in the regionals. No wonder they see us approaching them to merge as "an attempted seniority grab." I'm positive they'd be signing a different tune if we were up to par with them.
 
Freightdog: I concur with you

I am wondering, though, is there a way to keep from striking, furloughing, and losing jobs? I am not smart enough to come up with a plan (only smart enough to write to a pretty good chat room to try and shake lose some ideas from people smater than I am).
 
Of course there's a way: the management signing on the dotted line when the time comes, and signing the contract that brings similar contracts to what our mainline counterparts have.
The problem is getting them to sign that.

Nobody wants to strike, but if you want the change bad enough - then that's something you'll have to be willing to do, and if necessary never return to that job if the bar is not being raised, or not raised adequately.
 

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