IIRC, Trump actually sold the Shuttle to an investment company ("Shuttle, Inc." - really) who operated the Shuttle through a marketing arrangement with US. All Shuttle employees worketed for that entity and not USAir. They also had their own union contract which paid better than the USAir contract. When USAir bought the Shuttle in 98, it initially continued to operate it as a separate corporation, ala TWA LLC, because of union integration issues. So Shuttle crew could not work mainline and vice versa. I think this ended but am not sure when. I personally don't think I would want to be a pilot for an airline that only flew to three airports but others might prefer being home every night.

In any event, the AA pilots think AA will try and set up a subscale for flying the Shuttle routes as part of putting everything together. I assume they have had some discussions with the pilots union regarding scale for flying the planes.

AA operated TWA separately because of the union and aircraft issues. I doubt AA will take US employees with the Shuttle so that won't be an issue. It will simply be the economics of RJ's and pilot negotiations. I suspect AA will run this as a mainline operation.



[This message has been edited by C17PSGR (edited Jan 28, 2004).]