Please straighten me out if I’m missing something, but is your second point supporting or refuting your argument?
The name of the game for mainline/legacy carriers appears to be just enough bread & water to retain yet suppress their own regional pilots’ while offering something superior to other mainline/legacy carriers to poach regional pilots from other mainline/legacy carriers’ regional systems. Flow and guaranteed interviews/preferential hiring/etc seem to be a bunch of mularky of no substance that exists purely for regional recruiting; even Envoy’s flow is heavily metered with squirrel words that allow flow to be retarded greatly for ‘operational necessity’ of the regional operation, right?
2 major questions in my mind:
1). If a pilot wants to eventually fly for DL, are they better off going to Endeavor OR a regional who doesn’t do any flying for DL?
2). Out of the non-WO regionals, how many will cease to exist as independent entities and how fast will they go away? Republic (63-ish % owned by AA, UAL & DL total) seems like the only safe bet to survive at present time. I would put SkyWest in that same category, but it seems there’s a chance SkyWest finally becomes union in the not-too-distant future and that fundamentally alters a lot for them & creates a likely-rough transition for several years & the possibility that it never comes together as a union carrier. Mesa also seems likely to survive due to their size & cost advantages (could low compensation become Mesa’s greatest benefit to their pilot group when all is said & done??). CommutAir is unique given UAL’s 40% ownership so they’ll probably make it, even with a tiny pilot group. The 3 TSH companies (TSA, GoJet & Compass) look like they’re really up against it. ExpressJet seems destined for demise (could a unionized SkyWest be the best thing that ever happened to ExpressJet??). Air Wisconsin seems like anything but solid ground & will have to convince some combo of themselves, lenders & mainline/legacy carriers that there’s a future there to overcome the large barrier of being an all 50-seat fleet by finding their way into larger equipment somehow. Corvus & PenAir occupy a unique niche (Alaskan regionals) but it seems there’s a real chance one of them (likely PenAir?) gets cannibalized by the other unless AS somehow ensures they both survive to keep a whipsaw in place. I don’t know a whole lot about Silver, but I don’t see how they’ll be able to compete for pilots effectively for much longer. Are there any other non-WO regionals who should be discussed? Only Republic looks safe from chaos at current point in time!!!
Originally Posted by
Funk
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.
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