Originally Posted by
Rotator
The whole regional airline complaint about low wages is interesting, but have regional pay scales ever been good? Some posts make it sound like the Mesas and the Great Lakes and PFTs of the world are a drag on the aggregate regional pilot salaries. Are these low wages at the regionals a new phenomenon or has it been like this for many decades? Are the low paying regionals and PFTs really creating a problem for everyone else, or has it always been this way? Just curious if there is any historical knowledge out there from some of the graybeards.
UNtil the 90's there were no "regional" jets. Everything was commuter turboprop feeder airline--which paid crap. BUT, you did eventually move into a good paying airline job after 5 years or so. Regional jets popped up and mainline wanted to buy them and have mainline pilots fly them on a B scale. Mainline pilots said no way. Mainline mgmt., then negotiated scope relief to create alter ego airlines flying the "small" 50 seat regional jets over 5-700 mile distances. A few years later, after 9/11 bankruptcies, these "regional" jets are flying transcons on mainline routes and mainline pilots are ceding more and more scope.
The COMAIR strike of early 2001 CRIPPLED Delta and forced them to increase pay. After that, EVERY mainline was hellbent to outsource flying to multiple regionals to diversify risk. But they got greedy and went overboard. Post 9/11 meant pilots were cheap and plentiful, there were no flight time regulations, other than commericial mins of 250 hrs. So "airline pilot" suddenly became an entry level job. MESA and maybe some other regionals were hiring at 250 hrs in order to pay 19,000/yr.