Originally Posted by
Paid2fly
It looks like you're either management or a management wannabe with your divide and conquer attitude... There is no reason for any regional pilot to take cuts, our profession has fallen far enough, and the only direction for pay and benefits should be upward!
Actually, you're wrong, and it has nothing to do with "management" or the so-called profession. It all has to do with simple economics… you have people lining up for a virtual minimum wage job as a regional FO, why on earth should they be paid anything more than the absolute lowest that the company can get away with? Compassion? Uhh… no. The senior management would get hung by the shareholders, investors, owners. It doesn't work that way.
When people stop showing up to interviews and classes at regionals, when they start canceling flights en masse due to lack of crew, when their customers (legacies) start complaining about poor completion/on-time performance due to lack of crew, that's when things might start to change, and particularly if the regional carrier cannot do anything about it since they bid for work way low. But this again brings me to the beginning - nobody forces you to work for a regional or for a subpar paying company.
See, regional airlines bid on their work with legacy airlines with the knowledge that they will always have a steady supply of fresh new pilots willing to work for peanuts. Historically, it has worked. Face it, they are doing their job - providing the contractual feeder lift at the lowest possible cost. Any successful company, and I'm defining 'successful' company as the one that provides the highest return to its owners/shareholders/investors, is the one that always strives to reduce cost and expense wherever possible, increase profit/return for the owners/shareholders/investors and getting the job done as contracted. Squeezing you is doing their job.
This will change when regional airlines can no longer find people willing to work for those wages for whatever reason (banks not providing loans, people not wanting to fly for 20k a year, etc.), and when their business suffers because of it.
This whole cry-me-a-river because a regional FO makes peanuts is nothing but an emotional garbage. The sooner you realize that this is a business, and business decisions are ruthless and leave very little room for compassion, the better off you'll be and the better equipped you'll be to counter it. Until then… you made your bed…