Originally Posted by
andry754
I know there is no place like home, and that there will always be pilots that will fly for cheap but that doesn't mean that every single regional airline pilot job is saturated. Their is still an enormous shortage of willing pilots to take a job that make 36k GROSS a year. so why not bump up the NET starting salary to increase the demand of filled pilot seats?
What makes you think the market hasn't already adjusted. New hire pay is up 2-300% over the past 5-6 years. SkyWest which probably has one of the lowest first year compensation packages has hired 1000s of pilots over the last several years. 100s a month. Half of the 4400 pilot seniority list has less than 36 months on the property.
The only airline I hear of cancelling a ton of flights is Horizon. But I'll bet you that Alaska management knew that SkyWest could pick up some of the slack with the old CRJ700s and weren't too worried about Horizon. AK management made the financial decision that they'd rather cancel than pay more.
I think a lot of this crying about a shortage is just management just looking for a cheaper pilot.
Just wait until the economy tanks, flying gets reduced, and all of these bonuses disappear.