United's Airline Fleet Has a Union Problem. Wendover Hasn't Proved Who Pays for It.
Wendover Productions builds a convincing case that United Airlines' pilot-union agreements complicate its regional fleet. It shows how contractual restrictions produce unusual aircraft configurations, limit the adoption of more efficient technology and force United to operate around arbitrary weight and seating limits. But it never establishes the most important part of its argument: how much these restrictions actually cost, who ultimately bears that cost, or whether abandoning them would make the airline better off.
That omission matters. A restriction that makes an aircraft less efficient is not automatically an economically irrational restriction. It may be the price of protecting employment, bargaining power and wages. Wendover spends considerable time calculating the inconvenience to United while leaving the economic value of those protections largely unexamined.
The contract is about jobs, not just seats
Wendover correctly identifies the basic restrictions. United's 2023 pilot agreement permits regional carriers to operate up to 255 aircraft with 70–76 seats, of which no more than 153 may have 76 seats. Fifty-seat aircraft are limited to 90% of United's single-aisle fleet. The agreement also imposes weight restrictions.
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But the contract contains something considerably more revealing than those aircraft limits.
Its first section is titled Recognition, Scope and Career Security. It gives United's mainline pilots the exclusive right to perform company flying, subject to specified exceptions. It also restricts regional operations between United hubs and requires at least 80% of United Express flights to operate under 900 miles.
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Most importantly, Section 1-C-1-h explicitly states that if a qualifying United pilot is furloughed, United must convert all 76-seat regional aircraft into 70-seat configurations. Those aircraft remain counted against the 76-seat limit. Another provision makes operating 70- and 76-seat aircraft conditional on regional carriers meeting requirements concerning the hiring of furloughed United pilots.
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This is the missing context.
The 70-seat E175 is not simply an amusing example of an airline sacrificing passenger capacity to satisfy union paperwork. It sits inside a contractual system designed to protect mainline employment when United reduces its workforce.
Wendover acknowledges that unions want to prevent outsourcing from undermining negotiated wages. But it does not adequately explain the wider employment protection being purchased through these restrictions.
I am not arguing that every protection is economically justified. I am arguing that an honest examination must identify what the restrictions are designed to protect before declaring them waste.
Wendover overstates the E175-E2's fuel savings
There is a more straightforward factual problem.
Wendover claims the Embraer E175-E2 burns an estimated 16–25% less fuel than its predecessor.
Embraer's own December 2019 announcement gives a different breakdown: up to 16% lower fuel consumption per seat and 25% lower maintenance costs per seat. The 25% figure is about maintenance, not fuel.
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Wendover has effectively transferred the maintenance saving into the fuel-saving category.
That matters because fuel efficiency is central to its argument that union restrictions prevent environmentally and economically superior aircraft from entering regional fleets. A projected 16% fuel improvement is valuable. A claimed 25% improvement is a substantially different proposition.
There is also a more important qualification missing from the presentation: the E175-E2 is not an aircraft that airlines can simply purchase and deploy.
It first flew in December 2019. Embraer subsequently paused development in 2022. On February 25, 2025, it announced an additional four-year development pause, explaining that US mainline scope clauses were not expected to change until at least 2027.
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The video appeared on July 25, 2025, five months after that announcement. Yet it presents the aircraft primarily as an existing technological alternative being prevented from entering American fleets.
Embraer's own filing also explains that it intends to continue offering the existing E175 with accumulated improvements. In March 2024, American Airlines ordered 90 conventional E175s, with purchase rights for another 43.
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The union restrictions are genuinely important to the E175-E2's commercial prospects. But the aircraft remains a development project, its advertised efficiency figures are projections, and its manufacturer continues to find customers for the existing model.
That is a much more complicated commercial picture than a superior airplane waiting for a union contract to disappear.
The pilot pay comparison is not a calculation of United's savings
Wendover compares a first-year SkyWest captain earning $141.40 per flight hour with a first-year United captain earning $342.75.
The difference is $201.35 per flight hour.
That is a substantial pay-rate difference. But it does not establish how much United saves by outsourcing a flight.
The missing piece is the actual financial relationship between United and its regional operators.
United generally operates regional services through capacity purchase agreements (CPAs). These are contracts under which the major airline purchases operating capacity from a regional carrier.
Under these agreements:
- Regional carriers receive fixed payments based on departures, flight hours and block hours.
- They receive monthly aircraft payments and performance-related incentives.
- United pays fuel costs, landing fees and other specified expenses.
- United determines schedules, ticket prices and revenue management.
- United assumes the commercial risk associated with selling the available passenger seats.
SkyWest's 2024 financial filing describes the same arrangement and explains that CPAs protect regional operators from fluctuations in ticket prices, passenger numbers and fuel costs.
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This matters because United is not simply replacing a $342.75 employee with a $141.40 employee and pocketing the difference.
It purchases an entire operating service under a negotiated contract. The regional operator must finance or acquire aircraft, employ crews, maintain equipment and meet operating requirements. United pays contractual compensation and assumes substantial commercial expenses.
The wage difference is real. The net financial saving attributable to that difference remains uncalculated.
There is another revealing detail: SkyWest reports that increases in its labor costs led it to amend capacity purchase agreements with major airline partners to obtain higher compensation. Lower regional wages do not necessarily remain a permanent discount for the major airline.
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United's own accounts expose the missing economics
United's 2024 annual report provides figures that should have been central to this investigation.
$2.516 billion
Regional capacity purchase expenses in 2024
Increase from 2023
$116 million
Percentage increase
4.8%
Increase in regional capacity
8%
Share of United's total capacity
Approximately 6%
Source: United Airlines 2024 Form 10-K. Regional capacity purchase is a reported expense category, not the complete all-in cost of regional flying.
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United had 412 regional aircraft under capacity purchase agreements at the end of 2024. The company attributed the increase in regional capacity purchase expenses primarily to additional capacity and higher contractual rates. Fuel and landing expenses are accounted for separately.
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These figures establish the scale of the business. They do not establish how much of the expenditure is caused by scope clauses.
To make that argument convincingly, Wendover would need to compare two actual operating scenarios:
- United's existing regional fleet under the current contract.
- A realistically redesigned fleet operating under different contractual restrictions.
That comparison would need to account for aircraft acquisition, financing, pilot compensation, maintenance, fuel, passenger capacity, route frequency and revenue.
Without it, the video demonstrates that the contract creates inefficiencies but does not establish whether removing the restrictions would generate a net financial benefit.
The distinction is fundamental. An expensive operating arrangement is not necessarily more expensive than its available alternatives.
SkyWest is not simply a non-union workforce
Wendover describes regional airline employees as typically non-union or represented by weaker unions.
The SkyWest example deserves more precise treatment.
SkyWest's 2024 SEC filing states that the majority of its employees are covered by written, binding collective bargaining agreements under the Railway Labor Act. Its pilot association, SAPA, is specifically identified as one of the established labor associations involved.
Approximately 89.2% of SkyWest employees were represented by in-house labor associations. None were represented by an outside national union.
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There is a genuine distinction between an in-house labor association and ALPA's representation of United's mainline pilots. But that does not make the regional workforce non-union.
SkyWest also reports that it entered into a pilot collective bargaining agreement in September 2022, increasing pilot pay rates. It subsequently amended capacity purchase agreements with major airline partners to reflect increased labor costs.
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Calling these arrangements weaker may be defensible if supported by comparative bargaining evidence. The video does not provide that evidence.
It substitutes a broad characterization for an examination of how regional pilots actually negotiate, what protections they receive and how their compensation changes.
United cannot always move regional flying somewhere else
One of Wendover's arguments is that major airlines can respond to increased costs at one regional operator by transferring flying to another.
That is a useful source of negotiating leverage, but it assumes alternative operators have the people and aircraft available to take the work.
United's 2024 annual report documents a significant problem with that assumption.
The company says regional carriers have struggled to recruit sufficient pilots. It identifies the FAA's 1,500-hour pilot qualification requirement, flight and duty-time regulations, reduced student pilot numbers and competition from mainline airlines as contributing factors.
United reports that inadequate pilot availability has resulted in fewer regional flights, schedule disruptions, higher operating costs and financial difficulties for regional operators. It warns that it may need to provide additional financial compensation or reduce regional flying.
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The Government Accountability Office independently identified pilot shortages as a factor affecting small-community air service between 2018 and 2023. Four of the five airlines and 15 of the 16 airports it interviewed identified pilot supply as a concern.
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This changes the economics of the outsourcing argument.
A major airline may have the contractual right to move flying between regional operators. That does not mean another operator can immediately supply the aircraft, qualified crews and operating capacity.
The threat of transferring work is real. Its practical value depends on the availability of alternatives.
Wendover explains the negotiating leverage but does not adequately examine the labor-market conditions that can weaken it.
The closing problem: an efficiency argument without a price tag
I will not pretend United's scope clauses are cost-free.
They impose real restrictions on aircraft configuration, regional capacity and the adoption of newer technology. The CRJ550 is a particularly clear example of an aircraft designed around a contractual weight and seating limit.
But the video repeatedly treats those restrictions as evidence of economic waste without calculating the cost of the restrictions or the value of the protections they provide.
Its E175-E2 fuel-saving claim is overstated. Its explanation of the union agreement leaves out explicit furlough protections. Its pilot pay comparison is not a net-cost calculation. Its treatment of regional operators overlooks the actual financial structure of capacity purchase agreements and the limitations of the pilot labor market.
The central question is not whether unions can make aircraft operations less efficient. They plainly can.
The question is whether the resulting employment protections are worth their economic price, and what the alternative would actually cost.
Wendover has not answered that question.
It has shown viewers an aircraft with fewer seats, less range and a peculiar cabin configuration. It has not shown them the complete bargain that produced it, the financial consequences for the airline, or the economic value of the jobs being protected.
That is the fundamental failure of this explanation: it measures the inconvenience of the agreement while never measuring the price of abandoning it.
References
1. How Airlines Decide Which Plane to Use — Wendover Productions, July 25, 2025. Watch the original video. The original work containing the aircraft comparisons, scope-clause explanation and pilot compensation claims examined here.
2. United Pilot Agreement 2023 — United Airlines and Air Line Pilots Association, effective September 29, 2023. Read the agreement. The primary contract establishes aircraft restrictions, outsourcing boundaries, furlough protections and regional carrier hiring requirements.
3. United Airlines Holdings 2024 Form 10-K — US Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025. Read the filing. Documents regional capacity expenses, capacity purchase agreements, United's control over commercial arrangements and the operational consequences of pilot shortages.
4. SkyWest Inc. 2024 Form 10-K — US Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025. Read the filing. Explains how regional capacity purchase agreements allocate costs and risks, and documents SkyWest's collective bargaining arrangements and pilot compensation.
5. Embraer 2024 Form 20-F — US Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025. Read the filing. Confirms the E175-E2 development pause, the influence of US scope clauses and continued demand for conventional E175 aircraft.
6. First E175-E2 Jet Completes Its Maiden Flight — Embraer press release, December 13, 2019, republished by Skies Magazine. Read the announcement. Explicitly distinguishes the aircraft's projected 16% fuel saving from its 25% maintenance-cost saving, exposing the numerical error in Wendover's presentation.
7. GAO-24-106681: Commercial Aviation — Trends in Air Service to Small Communities — US Government Accountability Office, 2024. Read the report. Provides independent evidence on pilot shortages and their effects on regional and small-community air service.