Originally Posted by skypilot35

I hope you are correct, but I don't think this profession will ever be any semblance of what it once was. I think the major airlines will milk the regional model for as long as they can. There are currently 21,500 regional pilots (APC numbers). So let's say (not counting attrition, retirement, etc.) the Big 3 each hired 500 pilots per year. It would take 14 years for the most junior pilot to put his butt in the right seat. My brother, 14 years is a lot of misery if your expecting to be lifted up by a Legacy. I understand this model is rudimentary. My point is that there are a lot of pilots waiting in line from the regionals. There are a lot of pilots leaving the military due to sequestration and forced retirement. There are a lot of pilots flying at other places that are not regionals. Im not trying to pee on anybody's Cheerios, I just think the pilot shortage is propaganda. I'm just not buying it. I fly with guys who have been here in excess of 10 years. They are great guys / gals. They've hit the wickets (check airman, chief pilot, volunteer, etc.) and crickets.

I hope you're right. I think most of us down here in Regional Land hope you're right, but I just don't know. The truth is I enjoy flying for OO. I like the people. I like the airplane. I like the places we go. Hell I'm on reserve and I'm happy. But, the one thing that burns my hairy beanbag is trying to reconcile the pay. That's it. The money.

I was in a food line the other day at LAX. Behind me was a Delta Captain. Nice guy. We started chatting. The Captain I'm flying with asks him if he's getting a lot of green sheets. This guy tells us that he got called out a few days ago to repo an aircraft for maintenance on his day off. The 1 hour trip he accepted paid double (Min guarantee is 5 hours). Once he got the airplane where it needed to go he was informed by the maintenance guy it wouldn't be ready for 6 hours. The Delta Captain was supposed to start his vacation. He said he called the company and they'd pay him for his vacation day, plus pay him double to take the plane back when the maintenance was finished. 20 hours of pay for 2 hours of work. Im sure you're familiar with the lowest hourly rate for a Delta Captain. He ends his story with, "I was at Skywest for 20 years and had a blast." I don't begrudge the Delta Captain one bit, good on him; but if I'm the CEO of Delta and I can continue to squeeze the regionals so I don't have to pay $4000.00 to a guy to repo an airplane, I would figure out a way to slow the hiring down to a trickle. I'd probably hire pilots from my competition: Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit, Virgin, etc. before I touched my cheap labor at the regionals because its just good business.