Heliocentric on Feb 17, 2015: This article, like so many in this publication, misses the real details of the piloting profession. It's true that the regional airline path at low starting pay has long been a traditional career path for civilian pilots. In the past, regional airlines (or commuter airlines as they used to be called) flew very small turbo propeller airplanes and made up only a small percentage of available jobs...10-15%...which meant that the low pay was short lived and the opportunities to move up to a higher paying airline were plentiful.
What happened is the airlines got greedy and saw an opportunity to offload more of the large jet flying to these low pay airlines to the point that nearly 50% of airline pilots were flying these low paid "regional" jobs...except they are no longer just small prop planes...they are now large passenger jets with business class and extra legroom class that you board through the jet bridge just like any other large passenger jet. Passengers often have no idea they are flying on a regional partner operating under the mainline's brand employing such low pay pilots. In many cases the mainline partner even owns or leases that jet back to the regional partner. By exploiting the traditional seniority structure, along with the cooperation of the pilot's unions which are controlled mostly by the highest paid mainline pilots, airlines have managed to lock pilots into spending ten or more years at these low pay regionals before enough opportunities at the mainline carriers opened up. These low paid regional pilots are locked into their regional airline by a seniority number that prevents them from competing for similar jobs at other airlines or having to start their career all over from the beginning.
The mainline carriers, who encourage this career path because it provides them a large pool of low cost outsourced labor to fly their smaller jets now face the dilemma of rewarding the career path by hiring mostly from this pool of regional pilots while simultaneously draining the pool of low cost labor. The regional airlines are the ones forced to look for new pilots but because of this seniority system structure that is set up by the big airlines and the unions they are only able to offer jobs at the extreme low entry level positions and at low entry level pay. This system effectively locks out the very significant pool of available experienced pilots that are older and have a lot of flight time in other aviation industries or they have chosen to focus on another career for financial reasons but continue to fly on the side.
If regional airlines were able to offer piloting jobs outside the confines of the seniority system unofficially enforced by the large airlines they would be able to draw from this large pool of available experienced pilots and the pilot shortage would cease to exist. Regional Airlines would save millions of dollars in training costs which would offset the higher salaries they would need to offer to attract these older pilots. They could simultaneously continue to offer entry level jobs at entry level wages but with a broader distribution of experience that would benefit safety and prevent them from being forced to upgrade very low experienced pilots to captain of a large jet airliner. I would really like to see Aviation Week take a hard look at the real issues here and stop pandering to the interests of large companies that pay the most advertising with these articles that don't cover the whole story.