Originally Posted by
Captain Tony
Yes, DAL is only going to hurt themselves in the long run. I fully believe they are very much a house of cards. I do not believe they will be doing well 5-10 years from now.
Meanwhile, they are hiring military fighter pilots with no airline or crew experience, regional FOs who are connected or meet the right demographics, and regional captains right at 1000 hours PIC. Experienced regional Captains above 3000 PIC need not apply, because they are viewed as "untrainable", "undesirable", and too set in their ways. Nevermind that this was the competitive mins in the last hiring cycle. And these Captains who aren't good enough to fly DAL passengers from the right seat of a 110 seat B717 are just fine to fly DAL passengers from the left seat of a 76 seat CRJ900 on the exact same route. Oh the irony.
Yes, if DAL keeps it up, AA and UAL will have cornered the pilot labor market. But hey, they can hire who they want I guess. As the hundreds of signs in ATL say "World's Greatest Employees". Even the 22 year old female MD88 copilot who never commanded an airliner, but now has better career expectations than the 20 year airline captain.
How much just absolutely terrible info can you cram into one post?
Anyone claiming to know anything 5-10 years from now other than there are going to be a lot of retirements is speaking out of their rear end. Given your ever so astute analysis of the 717, your fundamentals might be a bit off hilter when it comes to judging economics anyways.
Let's exam the rest of this pile of junk: Starting out, you need to understand that I currently train new hires (among others).
All the majors and legacies highly value military experience. They have proven themselves in the most difficult training programs in the world. I was a bit curious as to what it would be like to teach them, particularly the single seat guys. Two words: Absolutely fantastic. They have to try harder (they are the ones you see in the CPTs late at night), but the discipline and ability to learn is phenomenal. The fact that they've never operated an airliner, nor possibly even worked in a crew cockpit before doesn't matter. They get it done and get it done very well. I completely get why they value this so much now.
regional FOs (well connected or not): I haven't seen a single one. I know 3 or 4 have been hired, but there have been over 700 people hired this cycle. Hardly an epidemic.
regional captains: I have yet to personally encounter a regional captain with LESS than 3000 PIC. Most that have been hired have spent a decade or more at the regionals. Yet another steaming turd thrown out here by you.
Which, well.. that pretty much tosses out the last part of that paragraph.
AA and UA value the military and PIC experience similarly, although AA has hired a handful more FOs. Your doom and gloom is laughable. Sure, a few connected people sneak in like the female you speak of, but that doesn't even account for half a percent of those hired.
How does it feel to be so very wrong?