As far as I know, the schedule is just a side effect of having a route structure where most of the legs are under an hour, which requires more duty hours per day than a jet to get the same number of block hours. We do have a 4 hour minimum pay per day coming somewhere down the road (2018?), but the Q400 schedules are just going to get worse until then.

The pay stems from a CBA we voted in late last year that killed our jet pay and SAP for shiny jets, which means it was signed just before the "industry standard" for FO pay jumped to $40/hr and lots of bonuses.

Since then, we've somehow managed to hire enough to keep pace with attrition, but with 30 jets showing up in the next two years, the lack of pay is going to bite management eventually.