Paying for instructor certs? That's a grey area but they can probably get away with it, not much different than new hire bonuses. It's forward thinking but won't help for at least a year or so down the line, and even then I can't imagine it would create any dramatic influx of pilots.

It's tough because you want management to be in the precarious spot of being unable to recruit so you have negotiating leverage, but you do want your company to succeed too; opportunities for growth always help pilots, and even little things like having the staffing to drop trips is nice.

Real talk: Everyone is having trouble staffing. The regionals with "good" contracts are probably doing better, but they're certainly not exempt from the conditions of the current hiring environment. So it might be disingenuous to say a good contract will suddenly fix staffing woes, though that certainly wouldn't hurt. And I do hope we get a fair, reasonable, and appropriate contract in the near future.

What else can be done?

A desirable base never hurt anyone. Putting some Ejets in Denver would likely net a few pilots, though SkyWest seems to have a death grip on it. Maybe somewhere else.

A concrete flow to a legacy might be the best thing. And none of this Frontier or Spirit stuff. American or United. Or both. If management doesn't want to or can't negotiate better financial terms with our mainline overlords, maybe they could swing flow. It only costs seats in future classes.

There are a lot of small beans items they could do (commuter hotels, company-supplied iPads, etc.), but short of annual retention bonuses I think those are their best options (along with an industry standard or better contract, of course).

Then again, maybe every regional is just waiting for the first failure of another to swallow all their pilots up.