Originally Posted by
prc4prc
I'm thinking Compass as a new career, and was at OSH. Met the Compass recruiters who all seemed like down to earth, good folks.
I stopped by the Sky West booth and talked to one of their recruiters, an Assistant CP.
I told the Sky West recruiter I would be interested in the LA base for Compass. The Sky West recruiter told me that Sky West was going to be taking all of Compass' Delta flying out of LAX, and that the Compass base at LAX would have to shrink.
Can anyone dispel this info that Sky West was handing out? And while on this topic, how long are the contracts Compass has for each Major at each base?
Meaning, is a Compass contract up soon, to the point where another regional could come in and take that flying away?
Thanks in advance.
p.s. I don't want to start a 'they are stealing so and so's flying, flame war'. After reading to many other regional threads, you Compass guys seem to stay above the fray - a major benefit of thinking about coming to Compass...
The skywest recruiter is full of chit. "Is a compass contract up soon" - This information is not publicly available. Our company is a privately held company, and specific details about our CPAs is not publicly known. That said, we operate a large fleet of one of the most popular regional aircraft out there right now. Skywest has had various rumors about "taking our flying" in both SEA and LAX. I have heard this for over a year and it hasn't really happened.
Let me give you a bit more of a run down and relative size of the bases.
SEA - 140ish pilots
MSP - 180ish pilots (a fair # of management/nonflying positions tho)
LAX - 440ish pilots
On the DL side, flying is fairly evenly divided although maybe a bit heavier out of LAX but block hours are distributed amongst all three bases, a SEA crew may operate LAX-IAH or an LAX crew may operate MDW-MSP. LAX is certainly the colossal base because it also operates all the American flying. The American numbers are amazing, we operate their brand new airplanes at what I am sure is a pretty cheap number. We really just came online with it at full speed a year ago, it's unlikely to go away anytime soon. If we somehow lost all DL LAX flying, there would still be a half-sized LAX base to cover all the american stuff.
So far the only "threat" to our flying is more in Seattle. First with the E190s DL was getting (cancelled, now to be CS100s/300s for Delta ... eventually..) and then now Skywest has 19 E175s coming online for Delta. It hasn't been announced yet where the bulk will go mostly, but maybe this is where this recruiter is getting his rumors. They have announced the first 5 E175s are going to Seattle and so far.. for "taking our flying" it's pretty unexciting. They're mostly CRJ700 replacement, they take a few daily SEA-SFO's(good riddance, this one is plagued with GDP/flow and terrible station performance), one daily SEA-SAN, SEA-BOI (which we never did) and I think there was one other. Meanwhile, we aren't "losing" anything, flying is just shifting. DL is having us start service from SAN-LAS, PDX-LAS, and I'm sure other unannounced routes (we also pick SEA-FAI up again in September when these 5 Skywest E175s come online.)
In summary to all of that, don't worry about bases, and don't trust anything a recruiter says. Trust your gut. If your base closes, you'll have to move or commute, but SEA for example has to be open until at least June 2017, and we didn't become a west coast airline overnight, we won't leave overnight but it is at the whims of Delta. LAX would stay open for the American flying. If Skywest comes in and takes over LAX flying, they aren't going to do any hotter with it other than maybe for MX as they're newer birds and we have older ones, it's a ****ty airport and our numbers considering that aren't that bad, especially with older E175s. Bottom line, we have the popular plane at presumably rock bottom prices as Compass is one of the cheapest pilot groups right now due to the flow agreement. The average CA has been on property only 2-3 years, so they aren't paying 12 year rates to anybody. Even the most senior CA are maybe on year 6 pay and probably only 10% of the pilot group is over year 3 pay, if that. Additionally we've historically had high attrition as people are trying to get to the majors as fast as possible, and most of the people here are young and hungry to get out, there aren't lifer captains taking up spots for the most part. That means we're probably always going to have a quicker upgrade. They hate us cuz they ain't us, but that's fine.
The only thing I can say for Skywest with regards to the bases is they have more stability among regionals. Now that we have American I think we'll have a bit more stability, but all the Delta stuff is still at Delta's whim and they like to move us. When that happens to Skywest, maybe a base shrinks and gets more senior, but if they fly for 4 carriers out of that base you know you're fine. For us, we've had like 6+ bases in 6 years. This is a good rising star to pin your flag to, but can we guarantee you a base, nope, but nobody else can either. I'd rather commute to a commutable captain line, and get out of here to my career airline, than sling gear for some 64 year old lifer for 4 years but that's your call.