Despite the many interesting comments on this complex topic, it can not be described in a short paragraph, even in three-four solid pages. Just some observations and questions here which require a bit of space, hopefully detached and objective, despite this "Pandora's Box" topic.
I was with three regionals for a short while in the mid-80s (flew Bandits and Shorts: the first airline survived for a year), and later began to understand and heard about how much more difficult it was to get a certain company's pay up to the standard, i.e. veterans of non-union Mesa Airlines said that Beech 1900 Captains/FOs were paid about 30% LESS than average. Working while a GOP President is in the White House or with a GOP-controlled Congress, despite their better qualities, puts you in an environment where such leaders love any employer which can figure out how to cheat YOU, the worker, out of standard working conditions and pay. If still in denial, one can read about US airline deregulation history-many souces are available for cross-checking.
Two guys I know worked at Mesa for a while, one had flown multi'turbine Navy helicopters 20 years and the other, a friend, flew complex Marine helos for several; both needed immediate fixed wing multi-engine experience while hiring at majors was forecast to either begin or continue. If a pilot avoids the first valuable stepping stone which offers a seat in a new-hire class, other than scabbing, can mean no more options for a while, or no paycheck for a flying job, and non-currency (this has seriously handicapped so many applicants: Microsoft Flight Sim can't be logged). If this was their first opportunity to further their career, then anyone who actually claims that both guys should have quickly gone to work at Walmart or become insurance salesmen after reacting with disgust at the crappy regional salaries, is not really sincere with such a view. This implies that a quality-experience and maybe above-standard pay regional flying job could land in their laps, all by chance-does it not?
Maybe someone can explain to me whether national ALPA can legally help support a strike at a codeshare regional, in a physical sense. As far as I know, under the Railway Labor Act etc, it is not possible, using reduction/suspension of service at the major partner. Maybe I was not aware of such methods, and wish we could all have used such legal support, in order to put standard speed/grossweight formulas into regional pay contracts, as COMAIR tried to. They were up against extreme (possibly some illegal...) pressure from the entire industry, which was leaning very hard on Delta not to cave in and help create an earthshaking watershed event. The advantage of operating regional jets might have begun to disappear, with a tremendous new industry contract precedent.
Are not regional pilots easier to replace during a strike, from a financial perspective, than their brethren at the major partner? If so, how can they win a strike with the entire industry subsidizing (while threatening via Congressmen/Senators? Guess how Close-In Noise Abatement procedures were forced upon the FAA? ) the owners to resist to the bitter end?
Will somebody also explain to me (via this site or e-mail) how a regional airline's pilots can refuse to fly a CRJ, Embraer jet etc if these are the only replacements for many turboprops at the same carrier? By the way, one of our FOs ( a former military fighter and Instructor Pilot, a Northrop Wonder) was ignorant enough to refer to our regional partners as scabs, implying that they had somehow crossed an invisible picket line, because they are flying Canadair CRJs. The guy obviously has a very bone-headed, purely personal perspective, so I realized how futile it would be to expose him to the reality of our industry, with his total lack of airline experience as a true "airline working grunt" before he came here, having been a major contributor to his blinded viewpoint. Luckily he does not work for the union. But he is not alone. Some of our pilots are arrogant enough to consider their 757 or widebody flying to be the only real airline flying on the property, although I don't like saying this in public.
Are these questions difficult to answer, without distorting/changing the wording or contex of the questions? I see so many contradictions in this topic and "Catch 22s", what simple solutions are there, other than subjective policies or abstract academics and value judgements-assuming that national ALPA continues to be far too protective of past/future promotions to even consider supporting, with freezes and fleet/seat protections, a national seniority/codeshare-based seniority list, as used at American, Continental? I'm not suggesting that our regional affiliates should have been prevented from ordering at least a "competitive" batch of RJs, but if seen from the perspectives of both regional and major carrier pilots, IF unlimited numbers of RJs were allowed (200-300+ etc), would not the affliate major airline(s) have far fewer job slots in the future available for many of these codeshare regional pilots or pilots from other codeshare operations (USAirways Express, United Express...)? Is there not some general, numerical relationship in this situation if it applied in the same overall percentages to every US major regional airline codeshare combination? On the one hand, it is not fair for ALPA to limit the careers of those at a regional who will stay there, but on the other hand how about those young enough to move on, who don't mind giving up the Captain's seat in order to be much more able to help the wife stay home with young kids or even pay for chldrens' college educations etc? Most kids don't qualify for scholarships...Is it possible that turboprop PIC hours are just as valuable as turbofan PIC on a major airline resume? It would be tragic, if many pilots felt that they absolutely must have generic turbofan PIC at any cost in order to escape a career with a regional; if the opposite result took place, too many RJs could mean much less hiring in the future when they have about 5,000-7,000 total hours: is any one jet the only reward, on a clearly discriminatory pay scale? One major airline prefers pilots to have flown more than one high-performance aircraft.
According to second hand info which I only recently heard from "my" FO
, one's having flown many hours in two or three different regional turboprops (an "aggressive career") is preferred to having flown the line in 'only' a C-141 for eight years, not to mention pilots who believe seriously in CRM. Don't ask me why it prefers combinations of types-in my opinion, they all have value, including helos. That hiring-in-a-nutshell philosophy came from someone in our Flight Personnel Dept. The backgrounds of my FOs in the last three years all reflect this hiring philosophy. The two who had finished flying C-141s as IPs/Check Airmen (Stan Eval) had both also flown Air Force Learjets at detachments etc in Ramstein or Stuttgart. Many FOs here were all civilian with at least two or three type-ratings such as Beech-1900, Jetstream, ATR-42...and pertinent line experience on those aircraft which made their resumes/CVs attractive. Just a thought or two. Those CRJs do not appear to have given any of "my" FOs an advantage when they applied to work here. So many were hired as civilians with no jet experience-plenty of folks with chunks of jet hours and a college degree might have been available anyway.
Don't get me wrong here: I'm not picking on anybody's views and normal, natural career goals to fly newer or bigger planes which pay more and go faster+higher. The same pay formula would apply if some court ruling would have the balls to admit and finally rule that at least two different pay formulas are used when contrasting US majors and regionals (clear discrimination, considering the calculations used by ALPA for mainline jet pay, used for many years in our industry's "contract pattern bargaining"), which ironically, in many case have the same name (or it is implied), logo and paint job on the planes. I could not believe that a US court ruled that American Eagles' various components could finally bargain as a single entity. With that as a precedent, why can't this legal concept be extended, whether the major owns a regional component or not? Just because Eagle consisted mostly of turboprops should not be a legal reason to separate negotiations from mainline American, or did Eagle leave APA because mainline American had no sympathy for its brethren who often work harder for a living (I was a 757 FO, which gave me some exposure to the easier world of many days with just two legs while punching on the FMC/LNAV/VNAV: a long day on a Bandit or Shorts [DC-9...] could be much more work and tiring: none of you guys/gals can "preach to the choir" and fool many of us).
By the way, some majors are selling their regional affiliates-could the significance of a future strike like COMAIR be a strategic reason, among others, which became apparent to managements after the bitter COMAIR struggle? By the way, how much solidarity do our companies have with their ATA/RAA union (a powerful lobby group), ...er..ahem.. excuse my frankness, they would much prefer the phrase "industry trade association" or such.
Ok, end of this Spanish Inquisition: no offense meant towards the Monty Python version. As an IP said after an 0600-1000 steam-gauge, high bladder psi sim period, "hasta la pasta".
If you folks keep throwing lances and axes at each other's personalities (with the raised computer monitor as your Saxon shields), which few would ever consider while on somebody's jumpseat, few combatants will have allowed even valid information to penetrate their brains. But I'm certainly above such tactics, let there be no doubt, King Aelfred.