For years major airline executives have recognized their regional affiliates’ potential to take a more active role in serving markets that until recently occupied the exclusive domain of mainline operations. But limited labor resources and influential pilot unions curbed efforts to penetrate the artificial barrier between mainline and regional flying. A robust economy helped maintain the status quo, sustaining traffic flow between marginally profitable destinations just enough to support the use of mainline crews in single-aisle airplanes.
Today, many of those aircraft in the seating category occupied by Boeing 727s and 737s sit idle in the Arizona desert, while their crews sit home on furlough. To the lament of mainline pilot groups throughout the country, the events of September 11 accelerated what many within the industry consider a natural and necessary outcome of a free market system. Emboldened by a newfound leverage over their employee groups during this lull in the economy, major airlines have recently exhibited less restraint in their mainline replacement tactics and, in some cases, a willingness to test the scope clause language in their pilot contracts, in essence challenging the unions to balk.
