Originally Posted by
Jefferson
Want to really get attention and affect some change. Every pilot with more than a year senority and less than seven, should walk in to their CP's office the day before their Oct. bid closes, and turn in their two weeks notice. Anything less than that would be weatherable. Think about it. You left on good terms and are therefore eligible for rehire. You leave a job fully qualified to fill the IMMEDIATE industry wide vacancies (change of domicile possible!), and worst case scenario is you have to replace a $40k a year job. Best case.... mainline starts moving some of that money they are saving from all those expensive guys retiring, and pays retention and improves existing contracts for everyone....
Just a thought.
Which is it, is a regional a place to make a career or is it an up and out only place? The answer to this question determines what happens to you as an FO. My guess is there is no Captains complaining right now, only FO's.
If you are an FO, you want to upgrade to Captain as soon as possible, but that's out of your control and in some cases you are sitting in that right seat for 8 years making $30,000 a year.
If you are a regional Captain, you no longer really care about FO's. Now you want the choice of sitting Captain at the regional forever or moving on to mainline when its your turn. You have options that FO's don't have.
Even if your regional airline had the best intentions towards its pilots, they don't get to set the ticket prices, they are constrained by the pot of money given to them. And your airline management doesn't even decide how its divided up, the pilots do. And the pilots have spoken. They've said FO's are going to starve and Captains are going to do better at their expense.
So who are you really ****ed at?
You talked about affecting change. You want to make some waves? Get a group of FO's running your union council. Vote to completely flatten the payscales where FO's and Captains make the same money where only years of service pays higher. How would that be? Would you vote for that?
Be honest, who would vote for that?
The ONLY other way is to get a bigger pot of money from the parent airline, but be careful because if you ask for too much, other airlines who shall remain nameless will fly right in under the radar and underbid you because they can afford to with newly found concession money. Employees at these types of airlines suffer from SJS.
Do yourself a favor and make sure pilots at your airline hold the line so everything Envoy, Republic, Silver and more have done isn't for nothing.