Embraer-E175-E2
Imagine a new regional airliner that according to its manufacturer burns 16% less fuel and produces 30% fewer carbon emissions. That’s around 8000 lb. less CO2 per flight. It’s estimated that over 10 years, a fleet of 10 of these aircraft would produce one million tons less CO2 when replacing old-generation fleets.
That aircraft, the Embraer E175-E2 with the latest generation, fuel-sipping engines, has already been designed, built and flown 5 years ago. But U.S. pilot union rules, likely borne by years of airline management distrust, currently prohibit regional airline pilots from ever flying it, rendering the purpose-built, greener, regional airliner unmarketable and causing Embraer to pause the program.
The names of the smaller regional airlines may not be household names to travelers. As an example, mainline United Airlines’ affiliate United Express uses multiple regional airlines including SkyWest, Republic, Mesa, GoJet, and CommuteAir. Like United, other mainlines (also known as the majors) such as Delta and American, have their own wholly-owned and/or third-party affiliate regional carriers.
The regionals, sometimes referred to as commuter or feeder airlines, funnel traffic using their smaller planes from far-flung towns to the mainline carriers’ major airport hubs near large cities. Regional airlines benefit from being a seamless part of the much larger mainlines’ booking systems which generates their business. Most regional passengers don’t even realize they’re flying with a different company since their plane’s livery may even match its mainline partner.
The mainlines benefit by gaining additional passengers who arrive by regional carriers to their major hubs who are then transferred to a mainline flight to their final destination. These thin regional routes can’t be economically serviced by the higher-cost mainlines, but by allowing the regionals to fly them increases their addressable market.
But there the bromance ends. Regional airline pilots are paid substantially less than mainline pilots. While mainline pilot unions such as ALPA and APA understand that the regionals create more mainline pilot jobs by bringing more passengers to their hubs, they also see an unacceptable temptation by the majors to encourage regional pilots to fly even larger aircraft – a decision that would save labor costs at the expense of high-paying mainline pilot jobs.
To walk the fine line between adding more mainline pilot jobs with the additional passenger traffic flown in by the regionals, and not losing jobs by overdoing the use of less-expensive regional pilots, the mainline unions added some speed bumps.
In their pilot contracts with the major carriers, rules known as scope clauses define the maximum number of regional jets that can be outsourced and their flight frequency. Moreover, any regional airliner with more than 76 seats and/or weighing more than 86,000 lb. must be flown by a mainline pilot. Period.
And therein lies the rub. While the prior generation of 76-seat commuter planes in use today come in well under the 86,000 lb. threshold, the latest technology planes are much heavier due to their improved engines. At over 98,000 lb., the new 76-seat Embraer E175-E2 is caught in the middle. It’s too heavy to be flown by regional pilots but not economically feasible enough to be flown by mainline pilots as the small number of passengers typically doesn’t offset the higher labor cost enough to make it financially attractive.
The new, seemingly arbitrary and arcane 86,000 lb. cutoff seemed to appear in newly bargained scope clauses around the same time as the Embraer E175-E2 and its now defunct Mitsubishi MRJ70 competitor were announced as replacements to the inefficient, 76-seat legacy regional airliners which had been around for decades. These next-generation aircraft weighed over 86,000 lb. but their manufacturers took the calculated risk that the significant improvements in operating cost, fuel efficiency, and carbon footprint would improve the chances that the weight limitation would eventually be relaxed.
While ALPA and APA declined to comment, it’s conceivable the unions thought otherwise. Technically these new aircraft could seat more than 76 passengers if so configured. Possibly the unions perceived this as a future opportunity for the airlines to negotiate a higher maximum seat count beyond 76 in the future, further threatening mainline pilot jobs. Thus, the 86,000 lb. scope clause limit may have been added to simply eliminate these redesigned aircraft from consideration.
Without a scope clause weight limit relaxation, there’s no market in the U.S., the world’s largest buyer of regional jets, for these new jets. Further, there’s little interest outside the U.S. where the hub-and-spoke system isn’t common and rail systems are more developed. Also, smaller 76-seat regional jets have higher fuel consumption per seat than larger jets so aren’t as attractive overseas where scope clauses aren’t as much of a concern, if at all.
One camp may argue that the weight limitation imposed by U.S. pilot unions has prevented at least one and perhaps two new, fuel-efficient regional airliners from entering service years ago. This fleet modernization would have already been contributing towards the aviation industry’s goal of cutting carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. Instead, the mainline pilot unions are currently approving new contracts with the airlines for significant pilot pay increases, while leaving nothing on the table for the environment, sustainability, and operating economics.
Others may instead look at it as the pilots having a very justifiable reason to distrust airline management, having lost years’ of gains in the past when contracts were ripped up during airline bankruptcies. An attitude of “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” has prevailed ever since.
While there’s no near-term end in sight to the weight limit stalemate, the airline industry has been historically very cyclical ranging from its current boom to its inevitable bust. Over time the negotiating leverage pendulum often swings in extremes from one side of the bargaining table to the other. When it does, perhaps the Embraer E175-E2 could eventually find its way into regional service.