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.
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.
Of course, mainline partners could simply pay them more to cover the additional costs of this...but they won't.
Problems are never quite as simple as they seem, nor their solutions quite as easy...
In light of the current extremely high load factors, with many flights continually oversold, do you really think mainline management can afford not to pay more for their feed? How much revenue would they lose not just from losing the feed itself(due to lack of crews), but the additional revenue from loss of those same passengers connecting to the mainline flights that are being fed in the hubs?