Originally Posted by
Otterbox
A TA bringing Endeavor pay/QOL items would have positioned PDT for a large amount of growth supporting managements goal of 100+ aircraft and 1500 pilots.
With the garbage TA the union leadership accepted and sent to the pilot group for a vote there’s a possibility PDT will end up shrinking (recently a goal of 20 NH pilots brought a net gain of 6 to the pilot group as attrition picked up after the TA came out) long term as ACMIs and LCC pay increases pull Captains away from the flow in addition to OTS legacy hiring and FOs who could stay to upgrade to CA go to other better paying regionals to sit in the left seat or to well paying airlines as FOs.
The lost decade concept that regionals only have to stay competitive with other regionals to keep talent because no higher tier airlines were hiring has been overtaken by events. Regionals now compete with ACMIs (Omni and Kalitta etc. paying $107-110/hr first year), LCCs (Spirit, JetBlue Allegant etc. paying $96- 117/hr second year) to retain Captain qualified talent... $65/hr @ year three on the Captain side of the aircraft isn’t going to cut it anymore. Anyone leaving will make more in their second year than they would staying to be a 12 year captain @$93/hr... their QOL will be better than 4-6 on 2 off and 11 days off a months also.
Really is a shame. You bring up a lot of good key points which no doubt made the decision to go to EDV easy. Regionals are regionals but there's definitely so much more untapped potential that PDT and a few other companies fail to effectuate. I'd love to join the company and work towards making things right but clearly the best thing I could do for PDT's pilot group is to not show up at all. I guess the management needs to get their heads out of the 2000s. Thank God for competition