Originally Posted by
What
You are not presuming, Pedro himself delivered this message to the MEC a few weeks ago, Kirby said the same things this summer. They are banking that a flow and a guarantee path to mainline will attract the new hires! Now they know compensation is part of it but as we have seen they will open negotiations when they want and not during section 6. They can also increase new hire compensation with a bonus, not just 5k sign on bonus but they can also offer a bonus that pays half on day one and then split the rest over a few years. They are already doing that with the School programs they have and the 10k bonus... There are many ways to skin a cat.
I think they'll be unable to skin that cat this time. The college programs can only move so many pilots through them during 4 year cycles and even at max rate, it's a drop in the bucket for what the regionals will need once the legacies start hiring en masse for increasing retirements. They'll need another plan as the legacies will still hire from outside their "career path" regionals and the incentive to flow to your "path" legacy will take way too long for many to see that as their primary motivation. Soon all three legacies will likely have this model, but they'll end up poaching each others regionals as pilots will go to the first legacy that offers them an actual class, seniority number and compensation. Would you pass that up ? Outside programs won't get near the quantity of pilots needed and the quality will be questionable. I think they have run out of ideas and are grasping at straws, but don't realize how ineffective their strategy will be until it manifests itself in technicolor in about 18-24 months.
The regional industry and market share will HAVE to shrink in size, but operate with a much higher percentage of larger 76-seat RJ's. At any rate, once Envoy pilots vote in their latest annual concessionary contract, the pay rates and projected time frame to advance to a legacy airline will not attract many high school seniors (or their parents paying the bills) to shell out another $50-75,000 in college costs vs. saving that debt and going into another profession that starts out at 2-3 times what $25,000/year regional pilots start out at........and with half the debt. At this point, it's time to watch the idiots who had a good run wringing out pilots like dish rags for the last 25 years finally face their chickens coming home to roost. At some point in the future after the majority of the morons flying for Envoy have already dropped to their knees for management and agreeing to commit financial seppuku yet again, they'll feel even stupider for doing that when they then realize what kind of leverage they would have had, if they had identified the real pickle these mental midgets in airline management were facing in the near future.