Originally Posted by
SonicFlyer
Very insightful post, but one question, devil's advocate....
Why would the majors cannibalize their own WO regionals? Why not reduce the flow to a trickle and hire as much as they can from outside of their WO's in order to hurt their competition's WOs?
There are a couple of reasons.
The first is that they can more reliably staff their WO if there is a semi-reliable path to the mainline carrier. If you hire a new FO, upgrade that pilot 2-3 years later, then get another 2-4 years before moving on to mainline, it puts the WO in a much more stable position for predicting manning and hiring. That follow-on carrot can do a lot to attract and retain pilots and help control wages versus a non-WO that lacks a flow.
Secondly, having a flow does not preclude from hiring elsewhere, and because pilots tend to apply at more than one carrier, all of them (carriers) have automated application scoring systems that more or less act similarly, allowing all of them to hire off the street as well, including from competitors WOs.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk