Originally Posted by
TransWorld
I agree with you, basically what I said. That is why I said the majors will be hiring some amount of 23 year old CFI directly off the street at Group I rates (currently FO starting at $88/hour). The remaining regionals will have to double their current FO rates to something like that to stay in the game.
The number of pilots working for the regional airlines will greatly reduce. Regionals will consolidate or go out of business. (Island Air and Great Lakes are just the tip of the iceberg.) if you want my projection of who survives PM me.
The industry will finally get enough new hires when the pay goes up a large amount. If someone gets that much shortly after college, it will be a starting pay more than the average engineers, scientists, pharmacists, accountants, and lawyers. Only doctors will get paid more. Of course, a pilot’s view out the office window is more impressive, as well.
Problem is the they won’t be able to train them quick enough.
100 seaters will be the new 50-75 seaters, hopefully with regionals dying. It’s simple numbers, regional managers are only trying to keep costs down right now to keep their jobs. Pretty soon the inevitable will happen and we will be too expensive to justify all the extra infrastructure.
It might take 2-3 years to pan out but it’s going to happen. The fact we are bringing ****ty old 140’s out of the desert proves AA is simply being reactive and stalling because they’re waiting to see how the cookie crumbles which actually makes a modicum of business sense in the short term.
And it’s not only pilots, it’s license mechanics too.