fisherman

Exactly. When Kirby appeals for scope relief by saying "'RJs' help grown mainline," he is conveniently leaving out the fact that AA can fly "RJs" today, no scope relief required.

If additional scope relief were given, 737s and A320s might not be flown by the "regionals" right away, but you can be sure mainline E190s/737s/A319s/A320s would be parked or orders would be cancelled as the 81-88 seaters came into service at the "regionals."

You would see "regional" growth at the expense of mainline.

algflyr

He's talking about the grandfathered E-175's that exceed the 76 seat limit. They don't have to take out the seats on those...

TrinityDawn

As an Eagle (Envoy) pilot, the biggest mistake I can see APA making is to budge on scope. Once E-190's are allowed at regionals with 12/4 at crap pay, they'll start to become a bulk of the lift and the earning potential for most of our careers will be shot. The management desired transformation into glorified bus drivers will be complete.

On the other hand, we at Envoy need to tell ALPA to take a hike, as they have continually undercut us and jerked us around. It's my personal opinion that we need to join APA to help fight Parker on scope and get 70+ seat flying at main line again. 2,500 additional pilots of leverage wouldn't hurt, and we need a union that is actually willing to stand up for US rather than only Delta and United.

Lechedegato

Excuse the ignorance here but I am still relatively new to the 121 world and union business. I've tried to piece together what it is by reading the posts but would like some clarity.

What is scope as it relates to AA and if does change how would it's effects be felt at AA?

If I were to start working at AA early next year is there a good chance I could be furloughed soon after should this scope change occur?

I just want to know if I should avoid starting at AA because of this. Thanks.

ackattacker

Short answer is it's not something you should worry about making a choice to come to AA or not. If you get hired at AA or Delta or United you take the job, period. The outlook remains positive so long as the economy remains good and old guys keep getting older.

It's an industry-wide issue that affects the overall pilot career outlook and books could be written about it. Scope refers to clauses in union contracts that restrict the carrier from farming out the business to other carriers... meaning if it says "American" on the ticket then it's flown by American pilots except for the specifically allowable regional flying. "Back in the day" typically only propeller driven aircraft where allowed to be flown by regional airlines under scope clauses. Everything bigger was flown by mainline, hence you had 60-70 seat Fokker F28's BAE146's etc flown at mainline. Then came the Barbie jets (CRJ's and E145's) and scope clauses where relaxed allowed 50 seat jets at the regionals. At the time most mainline pilots didn't want to fly those little jets and didn't see the danger in relaxing the scope I suppose since they already had their job and where willing to trade scope for more pay in negotations. Then, post 9/11, most of the legacy carriers started allowing 76 seats and sometimes bigger in emergency bankruptcy contracts. Now more flights are operated daily by so called "regional airlines" than are operated by legacy carriers. This has the net effect of lowering average pilot pay nationwide, allowing of "whipsawing" (constantly seeking the lowest bidder), and shrinking mainline fleets. It's been very destructive to the pilot profession across the board.

US Air has a few CRJ900's flying around operated by Mesa which seat 86 (which are grandfathered in) but in general the combined AA/US Air has a 76 seat limit. Kirby want to relax that up to 81 seats but I think I speak for most on this board when I say "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." A seniority based, unionized workforce only works for the employees when you can keep the jobs in house.

Could write another book about code-sharing, which in some ways is another end around the contract, but I'll leave that for another day.

Surprise

Are there any legitimate updates on JCBA progress? I keep hearing a bunch of rumors, but it's been awfully quiet from the union(s). I understand you can't negotiate in public, but even a vaguely worded "things are going well" email might be nice.

And on a totally unrelated note, this

reminds me of this (which is possibly NSFW depending on where you work):

R57 relay

I watched the DFW crew news today with Kirby.

For AA guys, if you notice, there will be one theme with any crew news. For the previous crew news it was closing the door. This one was for scope relief, with Kirby relieved that someone asked the question so he didn't have to bring it up. They say crew news is for them, and I think it does bring up good points. That said, it is a forum to draw our attention to their issues.

So, scope. Is just adding a few seat to aircraft already on the property the issue, or if they get that will they retire the E190s?

Does it matter? On the east US bids we've had captain positions on the 190 go unbid. Nobody wants them, desipte the pay raise for low LOS pilots. Everybody says bring them to the mainline, but they don't want to fly them. What's the answer?

I don't know, but I will go out on a limb and say you won't ever see anything smaller than an E190 on the mainline.

R57 relay

Ackattacher summed it up well.

Scope is basically who can fly an airplane with the mainline code or name on the side. It varies from airline to airline, but is becoming standard at around the 80 seat mark. Back in the day, US had scope that only allowed turbojet aircraft to be on the US code if flown by US pilots. Delta allowed the 50 seat RJ revolution, so the rest of us followed.

It will be what it will be and most majors will be along the same lines. I wouldn't let that be a determining factor on my career selection.

JetMonkey

True story.. In 1995 the Continental pilots voted in their new CBA which included scope relief for 50 seat RJ's. The scope rule was to allow for only ExpressJet pilots (Continental Express wholly owned at the time) to fly jets up to 50 seats in and out of the hubs only. There was NO plane limit written.

THE VERY NEXT DAY after the contract was ratified, Continental placed an order to Embraer for 274 EMB-145's.

Here were the now famous words spoken from the CAL MEC chairman after that... "Uh, we didn't think they were going to order that many."

R57 relay

True story. At one time US Airways pilots had some of the best scope in the business. No turbojet could be flown with the US code unless it was flown by US pilots. Despite Delta pilots letting the camel out of the tent, US pilots held the line and US management was going to put RJs on the mainline...until 9/11. Force majeure, everything changed.

When we signed the MOU the big fear was that we would order massive numbers of E190s because of the rates. Not so. If we give them 5 seats on the 175, will that get rid of the 190s? Does anyone care? I don't know the answer, but everyone seems to want to hold the line on scope, but no one seems to want to fly them at the mainline.