30K contract for FO's? Good lord. This place has gone down hill in just the 3 years I left its unreal. Any FO who goes there and willfully signs that, deserves whatever they have coming for them. Stay away.
Here is an idea. With all the incentive money they are throwing around, why don't you take all of that and increase pay across the board significantly? Now you can attract enough people your not short and your not cutting routes. With the number of people I know that do pick up incentive days, this is costing Cape a lot of money. Spend it on the pay scale and see what happens.
There are a lot of guys I know that do live in New England. With the ATP rule they are almost all going to 121 jet operators. However, if you brought up the pay and maybe had a base guarantee or something (for the guys who straight up already live in Augusta, or Rockland etc) I think it would significantly help get people in the door.
Ultimately, to me, they bit off way more than they could EVER chew. The second they went into MT I knew it was going to kill them. When I was there they had enough pilots to mostly get by in the NE during the summer, Caribbean in winter and still staff the EAS out of STL. Now they added MT and some sea plane operation out of South FL to the Bahamas? They need to reign it in a bit. If you have the pilots that's fine to expand, but they added a lot of this right when the ATP rule hit and tons of people were leaving.
I think if Cape wants to find a group of new "lifers" or people who will be staying long term, they should go back to providing housing in base (ie these properties are assets on their books) and increasing the pay. You do that and everything changes. I remember them sending me to the BVI. I got a week off. Zero assistance from anyone in finding a place, car or anything. It was a joke. Thankfully I found a place with a couple other guys, but still. What other companies send employees over seas or other countries with zero assistance? Thats pretty sad.
Ultimately I had a lot of fun in my one year at Cape, but after a year it was time to go. If they were to make some changes I may have stayed (as well as a lot of my friends who followed me out). I hope things change over there for the better.