Originally Posted by
Wynncore
Ahh, the ol'e "Need not fear, they can't staff it even if they wanted to!" comfort blanket. Trust me, they will find a way to do so. They'll offer pay rates $20-$30 above the "industry standard" E-175 rates for both seats and voila, they'll have pilots. If SJS was strong back in the day when the CRJ-900 was new...imagine a UND/ERAU grad looking at the prospect of flying a CS-300 or E195-E2 right out of the gate for compensation far better than what they imagined it would be..
I didn't say get comfortable, I said "get scope". But I don't think you need to lose sleep for the next two years.
Yeah sure you can get CFI's to do anything, but you can't do a startup airline with a startup jet with CFI's. You need experienced LCA and SIM guys. BTDT, the FAA is pretty picky about who they let do things like that.
Of course you can do it, but you're not saving any money if you have to pay pilots 80% of narrowbody rates to fly a plane that carries 60% of pax a NB can. Outsourcing doesn't work when there's a labor shortage, the existing regionals are fraying at the seams already. And the shortage hasn't even got warmed up yet.
The bigs are not trying to push the boundaries to do more outsourcing right now, they're trying to setup flow mechanisms to recruit pilots to man the regional flying they have today, and man mainline in a few years.