Originally Posted by
Aksleddriver
So say I'm a ceo of a regional, I go to church, wake up the next morning and decide that I want to increase first officer pay, make better commutable reserve or regular lines to help retain and recrute, is it as simple as calling HR and telling them to make it happen ?
In theory, yes. You're the HMFIC, right?!?
In reality, no.
As CEO, you'd have to ask yourself: "How can I pay for this?" Because everything has an associated cost - is the cost of these changes less than the cost of inaction?
Biggest issue right now IMO isn't that regionals
don't want to pay the compensation required by the labor supply/demand curve...its that they
*can't* due to fixed fee capacity lift agreements that have increasingly been squeezed by their mainline partners, drastically lowering margins.
For example, changes to scheduling will likely mean more pilots required...increasing costs beyond simply higher payrates.
In short, majors don't want to pay a penny more to their regional partners for more reliable regional lift...and have to face the economic consequences of that via operational issues with their contracted lift.
"The high cost of low overhead", and all that.
Which comes back to the cost of action v. inaction.
To say nothing of getting buy-in from the Board of Directors and ownership...