Originally Posted by
Fourpaw
It all comes down to the laws of supply and demand, whether or not anyone actually wants to recognize the fact. If regional airline pilots were of such commodity, they would be paid as such. Wages will not be increased dramatically because current contracts will never be able to support such increases.
A regional airline pilot will always make 20-30k a year, at least starting, because there are plenty of people lining up for the job. An oil field truck driver can make 70k a year their first year. Why? Because there aren't enough people to fill the position.
To make money at flying, you have to locate a niche that needs to be filled. I'll make 30k this year just in contract pay from flying a single engine. Supply and demand...
Supply and demand...doesn't mean what you say it means. Pilots ARE a commodity, but because the market cannot support wages equal to a pilot's potential "worth", it won't. We can cry and whine about it all we want, but when you have a market that demands costs paid by the customer to be low, earnings cannot support what we "think" we are worth. It will be truly interesting to see what the 60 hour max duty week will do to the profit margins of the regionals...more mouths to feed with no change to the overall production of the group. It's the nature of the beast to start making a pauper's wages...even if one were uninformed enough to do the 100k in loans to get to this point.