This PNCL business simply highlights how the regional industry is DESIGNED to work. The 9E pilot group collectively pulls themselves out of the gutter to achieve a MODEST increase in compensation and a year later they are facing chapter 11.
Nobody is ever going to get ahead in the regionals...hell, they don't even want you to have a decent middle-class lifestyle. At age 40 when you have a mortgage, two cars, and two kids take a look around you...if more than ten percent of your fellow pilots at your regional look like you then ALL of you are living on borrowed time.
If too many people at your regional are making more than $25K they are going to either file BK or shift the flying to a younger crowd in the long run. There's no future at a regional unless 90% of your peers move on. They can afford a few six-figure grey beards...they need them to fill the training and management ranks, as well as to keep the young bucks under control.
Well said. Since the RJ boom these airlines have based their hiring on the basis that pilots will only be there for maybe 3 years?? Now that the turnover has almost stopped regionals can't keep afloat.