Originally Posted by
JT8D
I hope you're right, but I find the company's obsession with 12/4 caps at all their wholly-owneds to be quite telling of their intent. To so persistently seek 12/4 at both Eagle and Piedmont only to give it away in a merger just because Eagle said no doesn't make any sense from a corporate standpoint.
Which makes me doubt AAG has any desire to merge any of the WO carriers in the near future. What does AAG gain by merging them?
I could see the 3 WO merging down the road only if the regional industry consolidates due to staffing issues.
If this plays out how I think it will, regionals will hit a breaking point in the next 3-5 years where they will no longer be able to find any qualified pilots to staff their operations. The 12/4 caps and awful pay will only make things worse but I think at a certain point there will literally be too few available new pilots, even if the pay gets better. The legacies will start to bring flying back in house and the regional airline industry will shrink considerably, especially amongst the FFD carriers. I think all of this will happen within the decade, but only if we stave off legislative and regulatory changes such as dropping the ATP rule or creating more loop holes for it, introducing a multi crew certificate, increasing retirement age to 67, etc.