AirDale...youve worked at RAH for how long? If anyone doesnt have backbone, its the "generation" that got hired after the 170s were on property. Feel free to "Return to sender" yourself back to where you were before if you are too disgusted to come to work.
This is one of the reasons I asked about Scope on the Alaska thread, b/c i really think it should be #1 in contract talks. It doesnt matter if you got 30% increase in wages if you arent going to be able to protect your job. Its a scary thing to see this happen as such a direct replacement...you cant be seeing clearly, if you cant see the same thing happening to you 10 years down the road, when you suddenly become "too costly" to operate.
Money always comes with strings attached, and for midwest airline pilots these strings were like powerlines. Midwest was dying well before RAH got involved, and the money RAH invested has certainly helped prop it up since. If you have heavy amounts of money invested, you naturally become able to call some of the shots...In this case they determined that a 190 fit their business model, and was a key to the survival of Midwest (in one shape or another).
The RAH contract was a 4 year deal signed into effect on 10-17-2003. At the time RAH was only Chautauqua Airlines and was fighting off an alter ego, Republic Airlines, after CHQ refused the proposed J4J agreement. There were no 170s on property, and Im not even sure it was certified yet. Job #1 was to protect the jobs at CHQ and keep an alter ego from getting lose. The single pay rate for FOs sticks out like a sore thumb now, but at the time RAH only had ERJ-145 family, so it didnt stick out as much, again scope was #1.
Since the spring of 2007 we've been in contract negotiations to better our current one, but at present a TA has not been presented so its tough to say what has come of them.