Originally Posted by eaglefly

That regional drought is indeed coming and it will be a hideous dustbowl, but I don't see it for another 2-3 years. AA and UAL have furloughees to work through and I don't see Delta exploding that fast. AA theoretically has no expansion plans (or planes) until 2018, unless the "plan" is a smokescreen (and very well may be). A merger with U is likely to result in overstaffing as opposed to the alternative (love to be wrong though). The good freight carriers hire at a trickle and Spirit and SWA have only modest expansion plans and a young enough seniority list that attrition vehicles like retirements are minimal.

I see more of a transition and consolidation of the regional industry that in the short-term (now out 2-3 years) will simply be a reshuffling of the deck chairs for pilots and mostly replacement, but some very modest expansion into larger RJ's. Then, if the desire is for a major push into a significant expansion of replacing domestic mainline or even just non-replacement growth, then you'll see the dustbowl take effect. Sure, a small percentage of regional pilots will make "upward moves", but comparatively few. Personally, I hope to be wrong and prefer to see the dustbowl start immeadiately. The sooner it starts, the less these management teams can ignore the fallacy of placing too much of their global networks at risk by depending on a model (RJ's) that cannot be depended upon due to lack of pilots. The sooner they acknowledge it, the easier it would be for them to adapt and correct. The options would be to pay more for RJ newhires which destroys their competitive advantage, but still wouldn't work as it wouldn't be enough for people not considering the airlines to invest time and effort into them or place the aircraft where they CAN attract pilots by offering them a long-term stable career path. The latter is the proactive path.

The quicker these idiots figure that out the better off we (and actually they) will be. The other tack is the reactive path and that's for them to go ostrich on this impending conundrum and kick the can down the road until it becomes a crisis that can't be solved short-term. Of course, that's not so bad either as to get out of that mess, who do you think they'll have no alternative to come crying to for help ?