American Eagle aka Envoy to try one more time to negotiate.

[WeAAsles]

Those local deliver drives drove breadwagon vans, you dont need a CDL for that.

They also drove tractor trailers though I have to assume for long haul deliveries to distribution centers?

 

[WeAAsles]

On the parallels I see it seems like the AE Envoy pilots wanted the entire commuter industry to stand firm to bring up the wages. As you guys seem to be saying here had Peidmont said no eventually they wouldn't be left with any aircraft to fly? Envoy was offered the new aircraft and said no. Now it looks like the company has other people who may be willing to take those aircraft and along with that, the work.

Not saying what's right or wrong but it looks like AE pilots may wind up left out in the cold as time goes by?

 

[FWAAA]

On the parallels I see it seems like the AE Envoy pilots wanted the entire commuter industry to stand firm to bring up the wages. As you guys seem to be saying here had Peidmont said no eventually they wouldn't be left with any aircraft to fly? Envoy was offered the new aircraft and said no. Now it looks like the company has other people who may be willing to take those aircraft and along with that, the work.

Not saying what's right or wrong but it looks like AE pilots may wind up left out in the cold as time goes by?

In mid-2013, before the merger closed and before AA exited Ch 11, Parker and Kirby told the Envoy pilots that their Ch 11 concessions weren't large enough and that they'd have to accept even more concessions or they wouldn't get any more large RJs.
 
The pilots told Parker and Kirby to shove it.   And sure, there are always others willing to take further concessions to "get the work."
 
Will the Envoy pilots wind up "left out in the cold?"    Perhaps, but it could be that Parker and Kirby end up with dozens of large RJs and no pilots to fly them, as the Envoy pilots will move on to other airlines (pilots with enough hours are in significant demand these days).  Maybe the low-wage pilots at Piedmont and PSA will bail Parker and Kirby out of their predicament, but maybe not.   
 
Hostess?    Hostess was more like an airline where the baggage handlers refused to accept concessions along with the pilots, and thus the airline was shut down.      

 

[WeAAsles]

In mid-2013, before the merger closed and before AA exited Ch 11, Parker and Kirby told the Envoy pilots that their Ch 11 concessions weren't large enough and that they'd have to accept even more concessions or they wouldn't get any more large RJs.
 
The pilots told Parker and Kirby to shove it.   And sure, there are always others willing to take further concessions to "get the work."
 
Will the Envoy pilots wind up "left out in the cold?"    Perhaps, but it could be that Parker and Kirby end up with dozens of large RJs and no pilots to fly them, as the Envoy pilots will move on to other airlines (pilots with enough hours are in significant demand these days).  Maybe the low-wage pilots at Piedmont and PSA will bail Parker and Kirby out of their predicament, but maybe not.   
 
Hostess?    Hostess was more like an airline where the baggage handlers refused to accept concessions along with the pilots, and thus the airline was shut down.

Yea I think this story is still only in the middle of the book right now. Another question is can the markets the airlines want to fly these planes to support the wages that people want or are demanding? People outside of major cities only earn so much and that's why many towns and cities are full of ghosts now.

 

[will fix for food]

It appears that PDT's TA only comes with a guarantee of 20 airframes, and that is contingent on the PDT mechanics and flight attendants also giving concessions.

With Parker making 57,000/day and massive profits they want PDT FA's to give concessions?

I don't know but I would guess they are pretty underpaid now.

The company sees a chance to play on their fears of being shutdown and are making a grab for more. Pure greed.

I hope the mainline employees are watching this. These are the guys you wanted. Once they have sharpened their knives on the regionals they are coming for you. You can bet on it.

 

[topDawg]

It appears that PDT's TA only comes with a guarantee of 20 airframes, and that is contingent on the PDT mechanics and flight attendants also giving concessions.

With Parker making 57,000/day and massive profits they want PDT FA's to give concessions?

I don't know but I would guess they are pretty underpaid now.

The company sees a chance to play on their fears of being shutdown and are making a grab for more. Pure greed.

I hope the mainline employees are watching this. These are the guys you wanted. Once they have sharpened their knives on the regionals they are coming for you. You can bet on it.

It isn't just going on with Parker. Anderson got the 9E pilots in BK and now the turn over there is crazy. They want to keep 38 CRJ-200s but don't have the pilots to staff them. ASA....errr ExpressJet is having the same exact problem. 
 
Its going to be hard to tell the senior guys at these RJ operators to stay around and make 30K a year when the mainline units are hiring like crazy. All they have to do is hold out long enough to get the call from the majors. 

 

[WeAAsles]

It appears that PDT's TA only comes with a guarantee of 20 airframes, and that is contingent on the PDT mechanics and flight attendants also giving concessions.
With Parker making 57,000/day and massive profits they want PDT FA's to give concessions?
I don't know but I would guess they are pretty underpaid now.
The company sees a chance to play on their fears of being shutdown and are making a grab for more. Pure greed.
I hope the mainline employees are watching this. These are the guys you wanted. Once they have sharpened their knives on the regionals they are coming for you. You can bet on it.

Mainline revenue is very different from what's generated from the regional feed and regional communities as well. If the traffic is only to a hub and doesn't connect somewhere else it's not necessarily worth it to continue offering the service. And people in those areas can only afford to pay so much to fly or they would be forced to find other options if they need to travel. It's economics.

 

[FWAAA]

Yea I think this story is still only in the middle of the book right now. Another question is can the markets the airlines want to fly these planes to support the wages that people want or are demanding? People outside of major cities only earn so much and that's why many towns and cities are full of ghosts now.

 

Mainline revenue is very different from what's generated from the regional feed and regional communities as well. If the traffic is only to a hub and doesn't connect somewhere else it's not necessarily worth it to continue offering the service. And people in those areas can only afford to pay so much to fly or they would be forced to find other options if they need to travel. It's economics.

I might be misunderstanding your points, but what does the income of the typical small-town passenger have to do with this discussion?   

AA has ordered lots of 76-seaters (E175s and fewer CRJ900s), primarily to replace the uneconomic 50-seaters and secondarily, perhaps, to replace some mainline planes where the MD-80 is really too much capacity.   
 
Don't know why you're focusing on poor red-state Americans, but the reality is that these large RJs are flown in markets like NYC-CHI (Delta and UA, IIRC) and those places have sufficient business travelers and high income leisure travelers.
 
This dispute is nothing more than Parker and Kirby wanting to chisel away at some nickels and dimes from AA's lowest-paid pilots - its regional jet captains and first officers.   Envoy pilots (when it was still called "American Eagle Airlines") gave concessions in 2012 as part of MQ's Chapter 11 filing (just like you did due to AA's and AMR's Ch 11 filings).   
 
And by May or June of 2013, before the new pilot rest and 1,500 hour rules became effective, Parker and Kirby raised their swords over the heads of the Envoy pilots and demanded EVEN MORE CONCESSIONS on top of the bankruptcy-demanded concessions to which they agreed.    What if they did not give more concessions?   Well, then, said Parker and Kirby - we'll find other lower bidders to fly those new E175s and CRJ900s you guys thought you might get to fly as we retire the 37/44/50 seat ERJs.   
 
Quite a bit has changed in the regional pilot market since May/June 2013.    Republic pilots overwhelmingly rejected a TA recently that contained pay raises - not concessions.   Some regional operators have had to cancel capacity purchase agreements before they expired because they can't find enough new pilots who have 1,500 hours (at the starting wages they're willing to pay).   
 
It's good business (from management's perspective) to squeeze your lower-paid work groups for every last dollar they're willing to give.  Except, maybe, pilots in 2014.  
 
Due to the new regulations, pilots are the one work group in the industry that currently has some leverage.  
 
Flight attendants?   Couple million people turn 18 each year.  Couple million turn 19 or 20 or 21.   There is no shortage of people qualified to be flight attendants.   A few weeks training and they're good to go.   Fleet service?   Starting wages are crap, but the airlines and the low-paid outsourcing firms seem to find enough of them.   Mechanics?   With routine maintenance able to be scheduled half-way around the world, there seems to be no shortage of mechanics.   Line maintenance is really the only maintenance work that has to be done in the USA in high-cost cities overnight.    And yes, Mr Owens, there's a looming shortage of mechanics because young people today see no real future in that field.  Been that way for a while, and yet none of the legacy mechanics have figured out how to leverage that into substantial pay raises.    
 
Back to your last point:   Most of the passengers on the 50-seaters (or their 76-seat replacements) are not O&D passengers simply flying to or from the hub.   Most of them are typically connecting to mainline flights.   That's how people who live in a non-hub fly to other parts of the country or Central or South America or Europe or Asia or Australia.   And it's how people from those places get to medium and small cities in the USA for business or leisure travel.   
 
Parker and Kirby aren't squeezing the Envoy (or PSA or Piedmont) pilots because they doubt that passengers can afford to pay to fly on these 76-seaters without such concessions.    Parker and Kirby are demanding further concessions because, in their view, $1.9 billion of profit in the first half of the year is just not enough and that they can add to those profits by squeezing a few more dollars from the regional pilots.   
 
As will fix for food correctly observed - Parker and Kirby will be coming after you next.    

 

[WeAAsles]

I might be misunderstanding your points, but what does the income of the typical small-town passenger have to do with this discussion?   
AA has ordered lots of 76-seaters (E175s and fewer CRJ900s), primarily to replace the uneconomic 50-seaters and secondarily, perhaps, to replace some mainline planes where the MD-80 is really too much capacity.   
 
Don't know why you're focusing on poor red-state Americans, but the reality is that these large RJs are flown in markets like NYC-CHI (Delta and UA, IIRC) and those places have sufficient business travelers and high income leisure travelers.
 
This dispute is nothing more than Parker and Kirby wanting to chisel away at some nickels and dimes from AA's lowest-paid pilots - its regional jet captains and first officers.   Envoy pilots (when it was still called "American Eagle Airlines") gave concessions in 2012 as part of MQ's Chapter 11 filing (just like you did due to AA's and AMR's Ch 11 filings).   
 
And by May or June of 2013, before the new pilot rest and 1,500 hour rules became effective, Parker and Kirby raised their swords over the heads of the Envoy pilots and demanded EVEN MORE CONCESSIONS on top of the bankruptcy-demanded concessions to which they agreed.    What if they did not give more concessions?   Well, then, said Parker and Kirby - we'll find other lower bidders to fly those new E175s and CRJ900s you guys thought you might get to fly as we retire the 37/44/50 seat ERJs.   
 
Quite a bit has changed in the regional pilot market since May/June 2013.    Republic pilots overwhelmingly rejected a TA recently that contained pay raises - not concessions.   Some regional operators have had to cancel capacity purchase agreements before they expired because they can't find enough new pilots who have 1,500 hours (at the starting wages they're willing to pay).   
 
It's good business (from management's perspective) to squeeze your lower-paid work groups for every last dollar they're willing to give.  Except, maybe, pilots in 2014.  
 
Due to the new regulations, pilots are the one work group in the industry that currently has some leverage.  
 
Flight attendants?   Couple million people turn 18 each year.  Couple million turn 19 or 20 or 21.   There is no shortage of people qualified to be flight attendants.   A few weeks training and they're good to go.   Fleet service?   Starting wages are crap, but the airlines and the low-paid outsourcing firms seem to find enough of them.   Mechanics?   With routine maintenance able to be scheduled half-way around the world, there seems to be no shortage of mechanics.   Line maintenance is really the only maintenance work that has to be done in the USA in high-cost cities overnight.    And yes, Mr Owens, there's a looming shortage of mechanics because young people today see no real future in that field.  Been that way for a while, and yet none of the legacy mechanics have figured out how to leverage that into substantial pay raises.    
 
Back to your last point:   Most of the passengers on the 50-seaters (or their 76-seat replacements) are not O&D passengers simply flying to or from the hub.   Most of them are typically connecting to mainline flights.   That's how people who live in a non-hub fly to other parts of the country or Central or South America or Europe or Asia or Australia.   And it's how people from those places get to medium and small cities in the USA for business or leisure travel.   
 
Parker and Kirby aren't squeezing the Envoy (or PSA or Piedmont) pilots because they doubt that passengers can afford to pay to fly on these 76-seaters without such concessions.    Parker and Kirby are demanding further concessions because, in their view, $1.9 billion of profit in the first half of the year is just not enough and that they can add to those profits by squeezing a few more dollars from the regional pilots.   
 
As will fix for food correctly observed - Parker and Kirby will be coming after you next.

I'd agree with most of the things you wrote if it were as simple as the Regionals only fly those high value routes you're talking about. Off the top of my head are people who live in Midland Odessa flying to DFW so they can transfer on to Paris? Do the airlines look at the revenue generated from the individual routes or the enterprise as a whole?

Much of your last comment I'll give you no argument but I'm wondering how much of the revenue generated by the mainline does or needs to support the feed. And even with the newer aircraft can it?

And yes Regional pilots are absolutely ridiculously underpaid.

 

[FWAAA]

Midland-Odessa is all about oil, right?   Isn't that where the Bush family lived in Texas?   
 
That market is easy.   Southwest gets about 3/4 of the O&D between DFW and MAF.    There isn't all that much to begin with, so AA's regional jets to DFW are primarily to connect MAF to the rest of the network. At MAF,  AA has very few O&D passengers who begin or end their journey at DFW.     Have no idea whether they're flying to Paris or London or somewhere in South America.   Some of them might be oil patch workers who are periodically flying home from MAF, just like in Williston, another oil patch boomtown.   And then, they fly back to MAF to work.   
 
My point is this:   AA has long served MAF.   Lately, with 50-seaters and more recently, those 50-seaters have been upsized to CRJ700s (freed up as 76-seaters have taken over the CRJ700 routes).    Towns in the oil patch tend to be places where airlines can get higher fares compared to dying rustbelt places.   
 
If cities like MAF didn't make economic sense with larger 2-class RJs, then AA would leave MAF and let WN and UA fly all the passengers (both of which are much larger in MAF than AA).   MAF sees regularly-scheduled flights to just four places:  Dallas, Houston, Denver and Las Vegas.   The first three are hub cities, and most of the passengers flying to/from those three hub cities are connecting.   
 
Bottom line is this:   Every route flown by AA or Eagle or US Airways (or any of its regionals) is a "high-value" enough route or it would be discontinued.   Sure, there will be towns too small to support 76-seat RJs, and those towns will see air service cancelled.   But the ones already getting 76-seaters (or soon to get them as more of those planes are delivered) have passed that test.   
 
Airlines look at the contribution/profitability of individual routes and their value to the overall network.   That's the job of all those number-crunching MBA finance types like Parker. Kirby, Horton, Arpey, etc.   All those whiz-kids hired by Crandall in the 1980s as AA expanded once it was freed of the regulation-era shackles.   
 
Again, Parker isn't demanding concessions because without them, people won't be able to afford to fly to.or from Midland-Odessa.   He simply wants to boast that he pays less for his regional feed (by a percent or two) than Delta or United.   If his gamble is successful, then more power to him.  
 
But he might find that his deep bench of in-house low-paid pilots at Eagle has flown the coop and he might be begging other regional airlines (Mesa, Skywest, Republic, etc) to staff his growing fleet of 76-seaters and at that point, those regional airlines will have him by the short hairs.   How smart will Parker and Kirby appear if they end up paying those outsourced regional airlines more money to fly those planes than the Envoy pilots would have charged under their bankruptcy contract?    
 
That's why I see Parker and Kirby as short-sighted fools.   His fan club will obviously disagree.   Probably only a matter of time before his wife and kids register here to deliver me a proper beat-down.   😀

 

[WeAAsles]

Midland-Odessa is all about oil, right?   Isn't that where the Bush family lived in Texas?   
 
That market is easy.   Southwest gets about 3/4 of the O&D between DFW and MAF.    There isn't all that much to begin with, so AA's regional jets to DFW are primarily to connect MAF to the rest of the network. At MAF,  AA has very few O&D passengers who begin or end their journey at DFW.     Have no idea whether they're flying to Paris or London or somewhere in South America.   Some of them might be oil patch workers who are periodically flying home from MAF, just like in Williston, another oil patch boomtown.   And then, they fly back to MAF to work.   
 
My point is this:   AA has long served MAF.   Lately, with 50-seaters and more recently, those 50-seaters have been upsized to CRJ700s (freed up as 76-seaters have taken over the CRJ700 routes).    Towns in the oil patch tend to be places where airlines can get higher fares compared to dying rustbelt places.   
 
If cities like MAF didn't make economic sense with larger 2-class RJs, then AA would leave MAF and let WN and UA fly all the passengers (both of which are much larger in MAF than AA).   MAF sees regularly-scheduled flights to just four places:  Dallas, Houston, Denver and Las Vegas.   The first three are hub cities, and most of the passengers flying to/from those three hub cities are connecting.   
 
Bottom line is this:   Every route flown by AA or Eagle or US Airways (or any of its regionals) is a "high-value" enough route or it would be discontinued.   Sure, there will be towns too small to support 76-seat RJs, and those towns will see air service cancelled.   But the ones already getting 76-seaters (or soon to get them as more of those planes are delivered) have passed that test.   
 
Airlines look at the contribution/profitability of individual routes and their value to the overall network.   That's the job of all those number-crunching MBA finance types like Parker. Kirby, Horton, Arpey, etc.   All those whiz-kids hired by Crandall in the 1980s as AA expanded once it was freed of the regulation-era shackles.   
 
Again, Parker isn't demanding concessions because without them, people won't be able to afford to fly to.or from Midland-Odessa.   He simply wants to boast that he pays less for his regional feed (by a percent or two) than Delta or United.   If his gamble is successful, then more power to him.  
 
But he might find that his deep bench of in-house low-paid pilots at Eagle has flown the coop and he might be begging other regional airlines (Mesa, Skywest, Republic, etc) to staff his growing fleet of 76-seaters and at that point, those regional airlines will have him by the short hairs.   How smart will Parker and Kirby appear if they end up paying those outsourced regional airlines more money to fly those planes than the Envoy pilots would have charged under their bankruptcy contract?    
 
That's why I see Parker and Kirby as short-sighted fools.   His fan club will obviously disagree.   Probably only a matter of time before his wife and kids register here to deliver me a proper beat-down.   😀

Credit. Not my expertise so I read and learn. But I'll bet you my AAL shares that Parker and Kirby read this Forum from time to time? More people than I thought float around on here.

 

[john john]

This dispute is nothing more than Parker and Kirby wanting to chisel away at some nickels and dimes from AA's lowest-paid pilots - its regional jet captains and first officers.

DP is doing it because he has the availability and convenience of 7 airlines on the property to whipsaw thrown in new shining jet syndrome and all DP has to do is use his resource to get what he wants

 

[WorldTraveler]

about 1/4 of AA's passengers on DFW-MAF are local passengers and the rest are connecting. The top O&Ds include ATL, LGA, ORD, TUL, OKC, SHV, and LFT.

The trend in the US airline industry is to move capacity and passengers as quickly to the mainline carriers and large RJs instead of on regional carriers using small RJs because the pilot shortage is likely to get worse and the economics are worse for small RJs, meaning the risk of losing passengers by the major carriers from their systems is very real.

the regional industry in the US is not the only being affected; carriers in Asia which have long been dependent on the US for pilots, are having to cut back on growth because there aren't enough pilots - and they are paying far more than US regional carriers - for those who are willing to live on the other side of the world.

 

[700UW]

Parker wasnt bluffing
 
http://www.psaairlines.com/american-airlines-group-transfer-47-bombardier-crj-700-aircraft-psa-airlines/

 

[robbedagain]

would it be possible that  given over the next few yrs  Piedmont's Dashes are timing out  no replacement aircraft that im aware of  that most of the work to smaller cities be translated to PSA   Mesa   Envoy/AE and may be a couple other outfits?