Originally Posted by
DashTrash
The plain truth of the matter is that the regional airline business model is broken. The fleets for the regional airlines are shrinking and the economics do not line up. They have to bid on flying from each mainline partner and those RFPs are usually long term contracts. After about 4-5, years pilots start becoming a financial liability rather than an asset. This has been stated many times from the likes of J.O. and others. I was told that when I was at Great Lakes from the President of the Company. Add to that, we that came from regional backgrounds are going to try and reclaim as much flying back to mainline as possible. In a perfect world there would be no regional airlines. All of that flying would be at mainline!
Certainly broken from the perspective of labor! But that's not the one that counts...
As far as mainline management is concerned, the regional system has never worked better. Despite an impending shortage regional pilots are falling all over themselves to take paycuts. In the eyes of management we're all commodity-widgets, no product differentiation at all (Ok well there was that whole colgan thing), so why not just buy the cheapest widgets?