Originally Posted by
fenix1
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!!!
I think the more accurate description for regionals from a mainline perspective has a number of elements. One is, “moving people cheaper than with mainline pilots and planes.” That’s why you see scope clauses in mainline contracts with pilots’ unions, and a constant push by mainline carriers to get “scope relief.” They need the regionals to scoop up people and deliver them to airports where they can be moved as a larger group on a larger aircraft. Part of that is that customers show a preference for more departures per day, even if it means a smaller aircraft. The trick for a mainline carrier is metering between mainline and regional aircraft to match capacity to traffic from some locations. So in that regard, mainline carriers want to keep regionals cheap, which is a function of both aircraft and labor costs. Teasing flow or interviews is, in my mind, purely a low cost carrot to help stabilize labor at a regional. As you have noted, even a flow has caveats that can allow a mainline carrier to shut off the spigot. Now, to your questions:
1) Unknown, but I don’t think it makes a difference. Biggest factor will be strength of resume so that it gets scored high enough to trigger an interview, and then you need to be fully prepared for the interview. Interview promises are nice, but if you show up with a thin resume and compete against other pilots that got an interview based on a more competitive resume and a lot of work to get it that way, how do you think you are going to compare during that day’s interviews? Much virtual ink has already been spilled on the topic of misleading guidance from companies to pilots before arranged interviews and regarding pilots that showed up poorly prepared. Don’t be that clown is all I can say.
2) If I knew the answer to that detailed and complicated question, I might put in my candidacy to run for the position of the Omnipotent and Almighty.
YMMV
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