I just find this interesting that all this is coming about as UAL heads into contract negotiations with crews. What saddens me is that other airlines may start this stunt with not so good carriers i.e. Asia routes. To me this seems like some sort of spawn derived from airline alliances (Star, Oneworld) where flying is shared, and the CPA operation of regional flying. Bring it together and this is what you have. Are your staff getting too old and and an inconvenience? Sick of actually paying crews a fair wage? Do you not wish you could substitute ****e for their crew meals? No problem...at Aer Outsource Lingus we will be glad to hire people at little or no cost to take all your labour problems away!
The main reason why I do not want this to work is because I just do not want it to become a trend that will ruin all of our careers. I just get so frustrated with people taking this job saying it is the new airline industry. What they do not realize is that they are taking the career out of it and turning it into a minimum wage job for all of us. I could care less who they are working for; I do not like the precedent they are setting, under the guises of 'oh poor me..I can't get a job', especially when traditional paying airlines are hiring. They are walking right into a trap set by airline mgmt to get around their labour force. And these new hires are basically saying, 'Give us crap and we will eat it. We will do anything to fly', giving other airlines the idea that they do not need to treat us well at all anymore as there are people out there who will even pay them to fly.
There used to be a lot of jobs in North America that paid well and did not require a masters degree. Manufacturing and different trades positions afforded one a decent life. Well, our lovely governments, pressured/lobbied by corporations, signed into the global marketplace. So as we have noticed, we are still getting a lot of the same products (not made to last) at an ok quality, but when looking at the marks on it, it usually is made in a developing country. Corporations simply wanted a global marketplace so they could cheap out on labour and increase their profits; developing countries were eager to get cash and exploit their workers in the process. So all those jobs we used to have, are done by migrant labourers overseas (hardly a career for a lot of them). The only people who have truly benefited from it are those that run the show, not you and I. Now airlines are setting out in this direction, and I fear someday, there will be fewer and fewer cabin crew jobs for us, or atleast ones that afford us to pay rent, mortgage, food and car bills. It is not as if we all make a fortune right now. These individuals taking these positions are opening the door for it to get a whole lot worse; they do not get it and cannot see the next outsourcing points will be Eastern Europe (already happening) and Asia, as this model will be used as an example for others. It is like a lab experiment.