Alaska Hawaiian Merger Serious Version

Kingairer said:
I've come to learn that its a bit more complicated than that. We've been threatened (by our union) recently that this could happen to us. Sounds great, all the flying in house! BUT..What do you do with the pilots over there? If they get merged in that could be really negative for anyone already at mainline especially when its "jumping the flow". Even if you did a mass flow and just snapped fingers and basically they agreed to be stapled, now you have thousands of 20 somethings on the bottom of the list, what does that do for recruitment? If you are a military guy flying F18s are you going to want to come to an airline where youll be stuck behind thousdands of younger guys, forever, and flying regional style flying in an E145 and 4-5 legs a day? Or go to another brand airline and walk into a 767 and fly to Europe? Its more complicated than it appears.
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Yep.

Airlines compete on frequency and price. If you can't be the winner (or at least be the same as everyone else) in at least one of those categories you aren't going to be doing that flying for long.

There are lots of markets that don't need more than 100 seats 4 times a day, so simply parking the RJs and sending in a 150 seat narrowbody on the same schedule is going to absolutely kill your RASM for that market because the planes are going to be half empty every flight. So you cut your frequency in half and suddenly you lose half your passengers because the times aren't convenient anymore.

So that means you keep the RJs but put them on a mainline certificate. Cool. First issue is what do you do with the Horizon pilots. Lots of guys seem to be living in this fantasy world where you can take the planes and just toss the pilots in a ditch. First off... that's kind of a dick move and secondly, despite some IAM units having crappy contracts, fragmentation language is normally a part of it. So the pilots are coming over with their planes, and while their career expectations probably didn't include narrow bodies, they aren't going to just get stapled, and that's going to be a distressing thing for the mainline group.

And even beyond the seniority list issue, keep in mind most of the bump in regional pay was all about fighting attrition. You take that away and in order to keep the casm somewhat near the rasm, the pay starts sinking down again. And add in the fact that the fringe cost (401k, insurance, pass travel, etc) for a mainline pilot is considerably higher than for a regional pilot, every dollar spent on a RJ hourly mainline rate has a multiplier atrached to it. And as much as we all like to think our parent company has a always blooming money tree in corporate, that's not really the case.

So realistically, either the RJs stay at a regional (and we tighten up scope around the edges where we can), the planes come up to mainline but they come with a seniority list integration nightmare and pay rates that are more than a regional contract but considerably less than the narrow body rates, or the markets get dropped or have heavily reduced frequency.
 
I mean, I like the idea of less frequency. Lots of BFE destinations survived just fine for a long time with one or 2 flights a day and no choice for where you connected. And didn’t they do a lot of “milk run” type flights back in the day? But these days every city of 50,000 people in the middle of nowhere needs 2 flights a day to each of 2 different choices for connecting city, and of course it better not be one of those scary old prop planes.
 
BobDDuck said:
Yep.

Airlines compete on frequency and price. If you can't be the winner (or at least be the same as everyone else) in at least one of those categories you aren't going to be doing that flying for long.

There are lots of markets that don't need more than 100 seats 4 times a day, so simply parking the RJs and sending in a 150 seat narrowbody on the same schedule is going to absolutely kill your RASM for that market because the planes are going to be half empty every flight. So you cut your frequency in half and suddenly you lose half your passengers because the times aren't convenient anymore.

So that means you keep the RJs but put them on a mainline certificate. Cool. First issue is what do you do with the Horizon pilots. Lots of guys seem to be living in this fantasy world where you can take the planes and just toss the pilots in a ditch. First off... that's kind of a dick move and secondly, despite some IAM units having crappy contracts, fragmentation language is normally a part of it. So the pilots are coming over with their planes, and while their career expectations probably didn't include narrow bodies, they aren't going to just get stapled, and that's going to be a distressing thing for the mainline group.

And even beyond the seniority list issue, keep in mind most of the bump in regional pay was all about fighting attrition. You take that away and in order to keep the casm somewhat near the rasm, the pay starts sinking down again. And add in the fact that the fringe cost (401k, insurance, pass travel, etc) for a mainline pilot is considerably higher than for a regional pilot, every dollar spent on a RJ hourly mainline rate has a multiplier atrached to it. And as much as we all like to think our parent company has a always blooming money tree in corporate, that's not really the case.

So realistically, either the RJs stay at a regional (and we tighten up scope around the edges where we can), the planes come up to mainline but they come with a seniority list integration nightmare and pay rates that are more than a regional contract but considerably less than the narrow body rates, or the markets get dropped or have heavily reduced frequency.
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ClearedForOption said:
By long ago, I think you mean in this millennium. My retired almost 20 years ago Uncle, NWA DC-9 Capt (ex-Republic), had a lot of those "BFE" destinations on his pairings - I remember seeing one that had a lot of the airports that I flew into when I was a RJ guy during the early part of this century in the midwest.
…
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If I remember correctly my very first flight on a commercial airplane was to Marquette, Michigan on a Republic DC-9 in the 1970’s.
 
BobDDuck said:
Yep.

Airlines compete on frequency and price. If you can't be the winner (or at least be the same as everyone else) in at least one of those categories you aren't going to be doing that flying for long.

There are lots of markets that don't need more than 100 seats 4 times a day, so simply parking the RJs and sending in a 150 seat narrowbody on the same schedule is going to absolutely kill your RASM for that market because the planes are going to be half empty every flight. So you cut your frequency in half and suddenly you lose half your passengers because the times aren't convenient anymore.

So that means you keep the RJs but put them on a mainline certificate. Cool. First issue is what do you do with the Horizon pilots. Lots of guys seem to be living in this fantasy world where you can take the planes and just toss the pilots in a ditch. First off... that's kind of a dick move and secondly, despite some IAM units having crappy contracts, fragmentation language is normally a part of it. So the pilots are coming over with their planes, and while their career expectations probably didn't include narrow bodies, they aren't going to just get stapled, and that's going to be a distressing thing for the mainline group.

And even beyond the seniority list issue, keep in mind most of the bump in regional pay was all about fighting attrition. You take that away and in order to keep the casm somewhat near the rasm, the pay starts sinking down again. And add in the fact that the fringe cost (401k, insurance, pass travel, etc) for a mainline pilot is considerably higher than for a regional pilot, every dollar spent on a RJ hourly mainline rate has a multiplier atrached to it. And as much as we all like to think our parent company has a always blooming money tree in corporate, that's not really the case.

So realistically, either the RJs stay at a regional (and we tighten up scope around the edges where we can), the planes come up to mainline but they come with a seniority list integration nightmare and pay rates that are more than a regional contract but considerably less than the narrow body rates, or the markets get dropped or have heavily reduced frequency.
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I don’t like being stuck with this model, even if you are (as usual) right.
 
ClearedForOption said:
By long ago, I think you mean in this millennium. My retired almost 20 years ago Uncle, NWA DC-9 Capt (ex-Republic), had a lot of those "BFE" destinations on his pairings - I remember seeing one that had a lot of the airports that I flew into when I was a RJ guy during the early part of this century in the midwest.



Recruitment is not a you problem, it's a management problem.

Respectfully, the Union doesn't run the airline. It negotiates a contract and protects the provisions of the current working agreement. It's duty is to the current members, within the scope of policy.
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The hypothetical decision to bring flying "in house" would be a management problem as well. I was an "all flying should be at mainline" guy as well until they brought it up at the airline I work for and I heard some counter arguments to it. There are some nasty side effects I hadnt considered. People bring up their "squadron buddies" and lack of seniority progression and flying RJs. I think theyre are fair points. All those are in the rear view mirror for anyone on property. However, the SLI between some lifers at a WO and a mainline group wouldnt be fun and mainline pilots could potential lose seniority with little to gain out of the deal. I just dont know if the juice is worth the squeeze. Upguaging when able, holding the line or expanded scope seems like the easier option. QX pilot group is almost same size as HAL right? No thanks.

Ref America West: I think it is much easier to have all flying inhouse if its that way from the beginning, no messy merging of pilot groups or anything like that.

It sounds like this is just hypothetical; just be careful what you wish for.
 
Kingairer said:
Ref America West: I think it is much easier to have all flying inhouse if its that way from the beginning, no messy merging of pilot groups or anything like that.
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That’s how they did it originally. Not sure if it was by coincidence or by some scope design, as commuter airlines, as they were known back then, weren’t even 121 operators for the most part. And weren’t necessarily tied to a mainline.
 
Alaska will divest itself from QX and play QX against OO or eliminate OO. No staple. No SLI. No career expectations for the QX guys at mainline. If I was a QX lifer counting on an SLI I'd be pissed but I think that would have been an overly optimistic assumption.
 
MikeD said:
That’s how they did it originally. Not sure if it was by coincidence or by some scope design, as commuter airlines, as they were known back then, weren’t even 121 operators for the most part. And weren’t necessarily tied to a mainline.
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If I remember right the Dash 8 guys were on the list at mainline. Probably turned out better it didn't happen but I was dying to get on at AWE back in 89. Could never get an interview.
 
DE727UPS said:
If I remember right the Dash 8 guys were on the list at mainline. Probably turned out better it didn't happen but I was dying to get on at AWE back in 89. Could never get an interview.
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Correct. It was all mainline pilots when they owned their own Dash-8-100s back then
 
ASpilot2be said:
Eh. It used to be a tough move between the two. It still was a tough move when I left. They pulled all your attendance records, training records. You had to interview and be accepted into the "pathways" program. It was a strange process.
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Yeah I hear ya. I just feel like anyone who really wanted it was able to make the move. I know all about "specialized hiring programs" from OO. I'm surprised no litigation has come from that •.
 
In regards to brining all flying to mainline. What would be the process if said mainline carriers regional feed didn’t have a union? Would it still be as messy?
 
DE727UPS said:
Alaska will divest itself from QX and play QX against OO or eliminate OO. No staple. No SLI. No career expectations for the QX guys at mainline. If I was a QX lifer counting on an SLI I'd be pissed but I think that would have been an overly optimistic assumption.
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No idea how iron clad the CPA’s are between said mainline carrier and their respective regional partner, however approximately 2-3 years ago when I was still at OO our CEO was in the js and was telling us about how we just locked in a 10 year deal with AS.
 
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