Hammer0425

Some may be aware that both CAL and CAL-ALPA (Continental Pilots) agreed to allow binding arbitration to rule over whether 51 and higher seat regional jets could operate for Continental. Continental pilots viewed this as a SCOPE violation however Continental viewed it as OK as they are now a United Airlines company and United has no such rule. As such, Continental had begun to sell tickets on Skywest Airlines 70 and 90 seat jets out of Houston using Continental Express flight numbers with service scheduled to begin to numerous cities in January.

Arbitration decision was released today and ruled in favor of the Continental pilots. This has potential to be a mess for passengers as many flights were scheduled to begin operation within one week. ExpressJet has moved a lot of planes and crews to Chicago, Skywest had done the same to Houston, etc. Check your itineraries. If you're scheduled to fly on a CRJ700 or CRJ900 out of Houston next month, especially if the flight is full, you'll for sure want to keep an eye on things.

From the arbitrator ruling:

“Placing the CO designator code on the UAX jet aircraft with a certification of fifty-one or greater seats to and from CLE, EWR and IAH is a violation of Section 1 of the Continental/ALPA collective bargaining agreement. The Company is ordered to cease and desist advertising and placing the CO code on such flights.”

mendicantfriar

I trust our crack management team will find a way to make things work.

doobierw

As you mentioned it will be interesting to see how fast they can react to getting Express plugged back into these flights and Skywest to wherever they are going to play.

Express essentially has 250 pilots who are in the process of getting re-assigned to ORD and now all of that will probably get placed on hold.

channa

Congratulations to the CO pilots and CAL-ALPA. At least someone was able to put CO's arrogant management in its place on this one. ^

For customers impacted, there could be a lot of oversales, especially on imminent flights. And for those who are impacted and want out of their tickets, this will be an operating carrier change, essentially making your ticket refundable on request.

channa

Was there a timeframe on the cease and decist? Immediately? Or within so many weeks?

EWR764

Does UA own the UAX CR7s/E70s at issue here?

Hammer0425

No, they're Skywest planes.

channa

SkyWest, Shuttle America, GoJet, and others.

Hammer0425

It would cover all those but I believe the arbitration was brought forth only because of Skywest ... thus far, it is only Skywest CRJ700 and 900's that were loaded into the system for ticket sales and only out of Houston, correct? There are some CRJ200's as well but since they're under 50 seats, CAL-ALPA is not contesting them.

raehl311

Suddenly, many passengers find themselves booked on UA flights leaving at the same time....


Am I missing something? If they are Skywest planes, why not just have UA contract Skywest to fly the same flights as UAX flights, cancel the CO flights, then "accomodate" everyone on the new UAX flights?

channa

That's essentially what they did -- fly them as UAX flights, which is what the CO pilots COntested.

colpuck

I am totally unsurprised at the ruling. I am not sure that the ruling has a substantive effect though as the CO code will be going away. It might keep the one off routes from forming in the short term, but I don't see the long term effect.

HeathrowGuy

In any event, CO can simply sell those same flights using a pure UA code, and make the relevant changes to fare construction and routing rules to accomplish the same end with only a very modest (and as colpuck noted, temporary) downside (computer res systems used by travel agents will generally favor same-carrier itineraries over multi-carrier itineraries all other factors being equal).

koc1723

So it goes back to one of the major points I raised back when they announced this. Now that they are going to be UA flights then they must follow the UA upgrade policy! This means that as a CO ff we are getting huge downgrades for flights out of our own hubs.
Since CO was trying to market them as CO flights in the 12XX range they we going to follow the CO upgrade policy. Now in order to fly these they will need to be purely UA flights.

I guess the bright side on this is that we are getting a 'chance' to upgrade on flights that before we had none! and E+ on those.

I do see some operational challenges for this. Meaning if they are UA flights then won't the passengers need to check-in using UA systems and agents. I can't believe that at these locations they have enough UA agents\kiosks\etc to handle all of these new flights!

It will be an interesting new years weekend for many at the new UA. I fear that CS will be dealing with this all weekend.

koc1723

I don't believe this is correct.

I believe the ALPA won the ruling that since the new flights were going to be flown under the UAX brand but using the CO flight code (12XX) as the primary designator code it violated the ALPA agreement.

Now CO can get around it by marketing it as a pure UA flight.

This is what the new flight from IAH to some ski destination that UA announced prior to the merger closing.