Originally Posted by
Bzzt
Mainline pilots will reap the benefits of increased profits. Regional pilots are outsourced labor, their entire purpose is to be cheap. Regionals will never be a good career and it was never meant to be. Get in, get your time, get out.
But not all regional pilots are legacy material, right ?
Many have skeletons and are fat and diabetic. What happens to these poor bastards when the flow doesn't work out as planned due to inevitable bumps in the road ?
They're stuck at the regional level, many now committed due to age and other circumstances. Just why do you think they want a B-scale and ultimately 12/4 for all pilots ?
Answer : Because they know it's highly likely many of them will spend more than 12 years there due to circumstances beyond their control. SOMEONE has to fly these planes for decades because it is totally unrealistic to think that they'll be able to develop and maintain a "revolving door" operation at any given regional in perpetuity. SOME regionals WERE once a good career, Legacy Eagle being one of them.....and that was flying smaller aircraft that are now being replaced by larger. Now, it's 76 passenger airliners flown country-wide (and even International) for peanuts. Truth is, that's a plan that will fail. Delta knows it and has (and is) angling back toward mainline ops for previously out-sourced flying. United in now getting on-board with the same idea. That leaves AA, clinging to a dying antiquated model destined to failure.
Will demanding RJ's be flown even CHEAPER bring prospective pilots to the regionals in droves. Nope. Will offering "cradle to grave" career paths do that ? Ultimately no,.........not when a pilot sees they'd have to spend potentially upwards of a decade or more at the regional level and discovers years later they were lured in as suckers. Another plan will be required.