Ok so I remember hearing on here or somewhere that Express Jet thinks that if the Q's come to IAH that we will be stealing their flying and blah blah, Of course I personally think that XJ is taking flying from CAL, but any who, I was jumpseating on CAL and a that subject came up and he was telling me that he flew with an ex XJ guy that personally went up to Toronto to test the Q sim out cause supposely CAL offered it to XJ first but they turned it down so we were next on the list, SO... what I don't get if this is true, why XJ would blame us on taking flying from them when and if the Q gets to IAH, I know were not gonna take any spots from them cause the Q is huge. Anyways just thought I'd throw that out there, correct me if I'm wrong! LOL
Personally I wish XE was flying the Q400's, no disrespect to my friends at Colgan intended. I will refrain from bad-mouthing XE management on a public forum for obvious reasons, but let's just say I feel like things could've been taken in a much better direction. They don't really ask line pilots about these decisions though, and they are Continental's airframes to allocate, not Expressjet's.
Do XE pilots harbor resent toward Colgan? Most, no. Many fell for that when CHQ first came into Houston & Cleveland, but ultimately most realized that XE's own failings are not the fault of some other company. Does it hurt losing 10% of my paycheck (and a lot of my counterparts lost 50-100% of theirs), because of all these things, YES! If anything I think a lot of them feel it was short sighted to retire the 1900's, ATR's, and EMB-120's from the XE fleet only to see those frames show up as competitors a few months later.
I will say it was very discouraging in the '05-'06 period, hearing certain rampers/agents speak with venom and envy about how much Express pilots were making from Contract '04. Then there were the newsletters coming out about how replacing express (and cutting their pay) was going to help fund retirment bennies for other workers. Very machiavellian. In the end all you can do is show up to work, do the best job that you possibly can and hope that if everyone does the same, good things will happen for your company. If not, at least you did as much as you could.
I haven't read the actual contract language, but I've heard that CAL scope limits the number of 70 seat JETS that can be flown outside of CAL's seniority list.
Yes, it limits them to zero, and thankfully so, since I have to say I would like to work at a place like CAL someday. The number of <51 seat regional jets is limited to 274, unless mainline CAL gets more planes, in which case RJ's may be by a formula based on CAL's fleet size. I believe it's 3-4 RJ's per narrowbody and 5 per widebody permitted, or something similair. Unfortunately, there is no limt on turboprops up to 79 seats!
Of course every pilot group has it's 10%'ers who are going to hold an unreasonable grudge. I'm sure there are still a few CAL guys out there who feel that way about express pilots, but you can't let a few bad apples be the standard by which the group is judged.
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