The point of my posts is to explain that there is a certain level of career earning that is required to get people to be pilots. When you start tying that number to airplane seats (picture at an extreme a corporate jet with 2 pilots and 2 passngers... at that seat capacity my pay rate would be $44.65/hr per passenger... $6250/hr per passenger if you could sustain that pay per seat on a 140 seat plane... see how ridiculous the pay per seat idea gets on aircraft with less and less seats? But I would NEED to be paid that "seat rate" on that airplane to make my present living on a 2 passenger jet), particularly at the small jet level, the airlines cannot meet the minimum career expectations any longer with aircarft size/seat-based pay, and it would cost exorbitant money to pay new regional FOs $60 to fly a CJ200 or ERJ. If they want to keep a few of those for a handful of markets, fine, but the crews on that handful of remaining 50 seaters should be paid a premium per-seat to do it, just like more than half of RJ high seniority captains are today at comapanies like XJT and EGL.

So when regionals attempt to get pilots to bite on crap contracts with new planes or refleeting or whatever, it is stupid to think they would choose any other business option. They HAVE to get new larger fleets to deal with pilot staffing availability and to move the lift economically without paying a small jet per-seat premium to 50 seat pilots.

The point is the RJ pay system is more screwed up and unsustainable with current equipment than mainline pay. Because we have pilots earning a lesser living in pure dollars while being paid more (per unit... per seat... not total actual pay) to move less people. That is the definition of inefficiency. They're trying to make their mess less inefficient with concessionary contracts, and continue those concessions into large RJs where there should be NO CONCESSIONS, because they (management) recapture their desired efficiencies with more seats per aircraft to gain revenue and pay us.