A friend of mine who flies as a commercial pilot has some interesting insight into the scope issue facing BA's OpenSkies. I've covered the issue of US pilot scope clauses on this side of the pond many times (this 2006 piece has nearly everything but the kitchen sink), but the issue is now hot-button with my British counterparts. Is my pilot friend dead on or dead wrong? You decide.

"I told you that British Airways wasn't going to stop with ONE airplane in their OpenSkies endeavour. So it come as no surprise to me at all, that BA is acquiring French carrier L'Avion and suddenly tripling the size of their 757 fleet.

"True, still only 3 airplanes, but offering 3 round-trips per day between New York and Paris amounts to about 1440 block hours per month. In pilot terms that comes to 3 days on, 3 days off, and 5 round trips ORY-JFK-ORY per month...80 hours block time...20 bidlines...5 reserve Captains, 5 reserve First Officers...50 pilot jobs that have already been outsourced from BA to OpenSkies.

"Now let's say you're a senior First Officer at BA. You'd be looking for a Captain upgrade bid. Here's 25 Captain jobs that have gone to the outsource garbage-dump...a third of them are an actual reduction in Captain bids at BA because one airplane went away.  So now instead of looking at Captain upgrade, you're actually further away from the left seat....and at the bottom of the list, instead of hiring 50 new-hires, we'd be talking possible layoffs.

"I hope this illustrates in real terms why scope is important to pilots."

(Pic from British Airways)

Read the complete post at http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/runway-girl/2008/07/a-pilots-perspective-on-bas-la.html