So from a pilots perspective is this a good or bad?
I stole this from another forum but I think this poster is SPOT ON about Oscar/Kirby
First, I will preface this with the fact that I am a pilot and very comfortable with selfishly pushing to better my own lot. I am against any relaxation of scope, simply because it erodes my job security and potential future earnings. I have to say that, because any nuanced opinion these days seems to tempt people to throw you out of their in-group and thus discredit anything you had to say.
That said, we don’t know that he has a fascination with outsourcing. That is attributing a motive to his desire to grow express that is completely unproven. You and the rest that take this for granted are speculating at best, at worst you’re naively guessing at his motives in an us-vs-him game to make yourself feel better.
For fun, pretend one of us are in charge of the airline and want it to grow. Now imagine you don’t have an attachment to the “pilot profession” or “shop stewardship” or the whatever the FAs tell themselves about their cadre; imagine your peers judge you on (and therefore your self worth is derived from) your title, your company’s bottom line and your wife and vacation houses.... well it’s pretty simple for an ambitious guy like Scott: you need more feed, both RJ and NB that connect to lucrative WB or other high yield routes (SF/LA- NYC/BOS/DC)! More feed means upgauging high yield routes, which = more $$$ for management/Wall Street with the same cost structure for labor.
Why wouldn’t a person in his shoes want more RJs? The CSAT scores, safety and overall reliability aren’t bad enough to warrant bringing it in house, so you have ZERO motivation to do so, not to mention it would cost more. So it’s not personal, it what 9 out of 10 people would probably try to do in his situation. Visionaries who can see beyond the normal and de facto rules of the game are outliers. We were lucky Oscar seemed to be in that group, and yes, it doesn’t seem like Scott is, but that still doesn’t put him in the category that most of you want to.
Again, is it more frustrating to you that he plots again you (As you seem to hope), or that in reality, you’re one of the 15 long term things he juggles and doesn’t really give you that much thought at all? all we can do is maintain scope so that his pragmatic mind will have to find a solution in the form of 100 feet or more NB feed
Quoted someone else:
Now the good cop from the good cop/bad cop equation is being removed. If Kirby get his way, those to follow will be at express longer than anyone wants, like you and I were at Skywest.
This illustrates the black/white narrative that we all gravitate towards quite well...
Oscar good/Kirby bad.
More like:
Oscar: visionary leader who realized he has better things to do than run an airline
Scott: bright, hyper-focused guy with a lot to prove. Obstacles beware
