Originally Posted by MarkVI
Clearly airlines are feeling some kind of burden — is this because they got used to pulling in 250 FO’s or is this because people decided flying for an airline wasn’t worth the investment in the higher-than-average cost of education, followed by years of experience-building?
Yes.
Requiring an ATP or R-ATP for 121 first officers did create a barrier of entry that restricted the supply of brand new, entry-level first officers available to regional airlines.
That, IMO, has less of an impact on "starts" of new aspiring professional pilots than the following:
1. career progression stagnation due to 121 mandatory retirement age change from 60 to 65 beginning Dec 2007,
2. Great Recession,
3. legacy airlines' whipsaw of regional carriers in mid-late 00s centered around rock-bottom costs,
4. legacy airline bankruptcy proceedings which decimated major airline compensation/retirement
Those four factors in concert made the cost/benefit for many aspiring pilots unappealing. Why would somebody incur $80k+ in debt for a college degree and flight training, only to slave for 4-5 years at a regional airline making $21-40k/yr while commuting or living in an expensive large metro area, then upgrade and only make $65-75k with no significant growth OR attrition at legacy carriers to create the "big sucking sound" pulling pilots upwards? And when you do finally "make it", you likely won't crack six figures until year 3-4, all the while pilots are getting older, having families, and trying to live their lives?
The juice just wasn't worth the squeeze for a while if you weren't already involved and invested.
Today, the situation is quite a bit different. Dec 2012 kicked off the delayed retirement wave which has yet to fully manifest itself, so with attrition from pilots going upward hurting retention and the entry barrier of holding an ATP hurting recruitment, regional airlines have been squeezed due to staffing. To cap this off, most regionals are operating under fixed fee-for-departure capacity lift agreements with their legacy partners which basically means opportunity to pass along increased crew costs (necessary to recruit qualified pilots and retain existing pilots) to their partners is nearly nonexistent, impacting profitability and possibly the ability to remain a going concern.
This regional airline economic reality is arguably the fault of the very legacy airlines who squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezed their regional lift a decade (or less) ago as far as they could to minimize costs.
The high cost of low overhead is coming home to roost - leading legacy airlines to increasingly in-source via smaller narrowbody growth as total regional aircraft in service decrease. And this is a good trend that we ALL should hope continues.