baseball

If Kirby wants those regional jets, fine. Go get them. We, the UAL pilots can and will fly them.

We need to learn the lessons of the past. When the economy sours, our pilots need a place to flow to. If the economy contracts, so too will our business model.

In the past, when our economy soured, the industry doubled-down on RJ's while mainline pilots were furloughed. Those RJ's are essentially shock-absorbers for the bottom one third of a seniority list.

So many former RJ pilots are now on major airline seniority lists now. My feeling is that those who were stuck at regionals for 10 plus years learned allot. It's like Gilligans Island. They were supposed to be out on a three hour tour. Instead, they got shipwrecked. Never mind about Ginger and Mary-Anne. Their 3 hour tour turned into one third of their career. No one wants to be stuck at a regional for longer than they need to be. Get the experience and get ready to move on and move up. Keep the career path predictable for future pilots and for those of us already here. If we do that, we can make Aviation great again.

It all starts and ends with scope. Enforce the contract we have, and get ready to negotiate the next one. Protect the profession, and keep protecting it.

baseball

It's not all about the "market for pilots." It's also about the quality of the career, the career path, career progression, and dignity and respect of the profession.

Supply and demand is not really what it's all about. It is part of the calculas, but it's only 1/4th of it. For most of my career the career has paid too low. The time-value of money, and its intrinsic nature demands that we get paid on the front end and the back end of our career. With external forces like the ME3, NAI, and "not so open skies", which is the aviation equivalent of NAFTA and we can see that supply and demand is really just about 1/4th of the forces that exert pressure both on the positive and the negative on pilot wages and our career earnings expectations.

We can never give in on scope again. General Patton never like to pay for realestate twice, because as a Commander he knew he would have to waste more capital in re-taking it. With limited resources, you never want to re-take the same ground twice. In our case, in our profession, that is funded by dues moneys, we never want to spend the same money twice and for limited, and/or no return. We haven't been able to re-take scope yet. I think the best defense is a strong offense. I would be going after RJ's and tighenting up scope in order to protect the profession and the quality of the product.

The outsourcing of our product hasn't done us proud. We need our product in house to preserve and protect the integrity of our brand. if we do that, we protect our airline's financials, and we protect more jobs at the airline than our own. We can have a synergistic effect that helps to protect ground handling, agent, and flight attendant jobs by simply holding the line on scope and going back and re-taking lost ground.

rightside02

I am a BOTTOM of the list guy, having said that . After spending many years at the regionals, my view is no way fellas like me would vote for a change in scope, being that many of us spent more time at the regionals than we planned on. That's life, accepted it and moved on.

However the other side to that is the ultra senior guys that have less than 5 years on property , about 2400 of them. Being a junior cat and never flying with them i haven't discussed the issue . Are they on the same page as me regarding scope,(HELL NO) or is it fair to say many would vote yes in favor of higher pay rates they can cash out on in their remaining years.

Not at all trying to offend any group , it's a different perspective from two dif sides of the group .

I remember flying for Pinnacle years ago and taking a Jumpseat on a Delta Mainline flight , when I introduced my self he said Pinnacle ? Had no clue who we were. So senior and out of touch, at the time Pinnacle did a majority of their regional lift. That scared me . In a dif facet I liked the idea of being that senior that you kinda have no clue . But not at the cost of my pilot group .

Senior guys what your take ?

CBreezy

Wait, why are we giving out two different seniority numbers? If someone gets hired off the streets to fly at UA mainline, they should not be bumped in seniority by a guy who's been flying RJs at the regional subsidiary when they eventually move up. Either you staple them to the bottom of the list (unlikely since no major is ever buying a regional for a staple), or you let them flow and get a seniority number when it's their turn.

TallFlyer

You do realize that all the regionals are still paying $30-40 first year, and the difference is made up in a temporary bonus structure that will go away the moment the supply and demand picture changes? I guess I also missed the part where I said that number should stay low indefinitely.

We can have a meaningful discussion about what that bottom number should be, but the important part of the discussion should be get the pilots on the damn list, because when that first domino falls, and one of the four carriers that makes use of FFD carriers brings that flying in house, the other will be quick to follow because otherwise their feed is going to dry up really quick.

Once that happens, then the compensation rise can start in earnest, because it'll be much more likely to be permanent rather than have a 60K W-2 made up of 30K salary and 30K bonuses.

Too late.

That's very short term thinking. Like I said, get them on the list, and then you can make the pay increases permanent as opposed to what's happening now. Or we can keep regional pilots on separate seniority lists under temporary bonus compensation structures. Yeah, that's some great career progression right there.

And please tell me how a 4-5 year equipment lock on a mainline list, vs a 6-7 year flow at a AA wholly owned carrier, or an indefinite time at a different regional, is bad for career progression.

That's some funny stuff right there.

CBreezy

Don't worry. He's a union volunteer at PSA, you know, the one that threw Envoy under the bus by taking the deal they knew their pilots rejected to secure 76 seat flying.

webecheck

I'm certain they already have this. I'm guessing a minor problem is the $50-100hr pay difference and work rules cost between RJ pilots and mainline rates--although that has to have some offset by not needing a duplicate corporate infrastructure, and the bigger one of how do you economically shed things when the economy goes south. Short term contractual work is a defensive mechanism to limit liability if things get bad. Ultimately though, as Oscar knows, brand protection comes at a cost and happy employees can do far more towards ensuring that than any other alternative. Who is happy when we give jobs away, and even less happy when the ones we gave it to make us look bad?!

If our union hasn't already developed a proposed solution to make this work for everyone (to include showing all the math on margins/operating costs), they need a kick in the jimmy. Its about numbers, brand protection/quality control, and security to minimize the downside when travel demand slumps (ie, company would want to be able to furlough without having to pay for it).

At the end of the day, the mainlines know what they have to do, so I don't really think there is much of an option besides bringing some 76-100 seat flying back in house. Maybe some really old timer can chime in and answer this. Did the biggest and most iconic airlines of their eras have a common theme of good mgmt/employee relations or was that irrelevant? I would think that typically the industry's top dog started by having everyone on the same page.

Andy

Here's the problem with adding a bunch of SNB jets to United. There's no gate space for additional aircraft at LAX, SFO, ORD, and EWR.
I suppose those SNBs could fly in and out of DEN, IAH, CLE, and IAD all day long as long as they've got spare gates at those airports, but most of our hubs are at maximum capacity. We need to flush out any RJs from those hubs and upgauge/reduce frequency to small cities in order to relieve the overcrowding. That alone will leave United with more than enough RJs to shift over to hubs that have available gate space.

TallFlyer

Not accurate, and long before I was on property anyway.

I guess if your only argument now is a non sequitur I'm doing ok.


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ThePenguin328

^Exactly! That's why those 737-700s were cx'd because there isn't space to park them unless you really do park a lot of rjs. LAX, SFO, and EWR seem to be at capacity. ORD can't be far from maxed out as it's our busiest hub. IAH probably could handle some growth. If a few rj gates were reshuffled at DEN and IAD it might be possible for some growth there, however UAL until recently was noncommittal to those two hubs.