Originally Posted by
TallFlyer
In the next 15 years, there are 30,000 retirements at just the three Legacy carriers alone, a number nearly double the current number of regional pilots. There's no way they're going to up gauge that much.
I'm not saying that every single regional pilot is going to have a seat at mainline, but I'd wager it's going to be a very high percentage.
No current mainline pilot yes, but it wasn't too long ago that Continental first year pay was $33 or something like that.
If the big shots decide they want to fly 76 seat jets and not worry about staffing them they'll soon figure out that they'd staff them forever at $35-40 for the first year, on a mainline list.
To your first point I think mainline will try get relaxed scope to compensate for retirements, which will help their staffing to a large extent, not completely but help.
I agree with your second point except they have to give a huge carrot to current mainline pilots to sign that TA off, I'm not saying it won't happen, it's because of that that we have a regional industry to begin with,