Originally Posted by
BoilerUP
The issue with regional airlines raising pay for pilots to levels "commiserate with experience" is this pesky issue of revenue.
Regional airlines operating under a fee-for-departure agreement are like a retiree on social security: their revenue is fixed. As such, when costs go up, profit drops. Costs go up enough and profit disappears, and the company ceases as a going concern.
This is completely and totally untrue. Considering all their [the regionals'] agreements are negotiated by the very entities that either own them or depend on them. The actual negotiations are for the sole purpose of making money for the managers and providing a low cost contracted source of outsourced labor for mainline carriers. Profits are completely irrelevant except as necessary to keep the business running.
Legacy airlines have negotiated EXTREMELY tight capacity lift agreements with their regional partners, such that regional margins are exceedingly low, WELL below what the average pilot expects their 401k return to be. As such, in many cases even if regional airline management wanted to pay going market wages per the labor supply/demand graph, they simply can't.
Which is exactly what I just said in response to your first two paragraphs. You are just trying to explain it in reverse rather than for what it is.
Of course, mainline partners could simply pay them more to cover the additional costs of this...but they won't.
They will pay them whatever they need to pay them until they no longer save money for mainline at which point they will do the flying themselves...again.
Problems are never quite as simple as they seem, nor their solutions quite as easy...
It is actually much simpler than you would like the line pilots to believe.