Originally Posted by Excargodog

I think people tend to mischaracterize what legacy airlines want out of “flow.”

For them flow is a mechanism of assuring a fairly steady supply of pilots AT THE LOWEST PRICE POSSIBLE. The delta (no pun intended) in payment between even the most senior pilot at Endeavor and where the senior pilots at mainline will retire is over $200K. Yet the DCI guys do what? Maybe 45% of Delta’s flying?

The longer the legacies can keep their codeshares working on the “c-scales” of the regionals, the more they benefit.

Does anyone REALLY believe that the retired USAF O-5 or O-6 who flew a single seat fighter for 2500 hours until he was sent to a staff job ten years ago is a better candidate FOR 121 FLYING AT A MAJOR than someone who has successfully been doing 121 flying at a decent regional for the last five years? That the UPT class the retiree finished 19 YEARS AGO was really THAT MUCH better than the civilian ratings, type-ratings, and recurrent recurrency the regional guy has been through while the military guy has been working staff proposals? The idea is ludicrous.

What the majors REALLY want is competent pilots they can hire reasonably late in their careers, get 15 or 20 years of work out of them at an average pay well below the max pay, and then retire that guy and fins another 45 year old to replace him/her. What they DO NIT WANT is to hire everybody at age 25, have that person max out the pay scale at 37, and then continue to have to pay that person that max pay for another 27 years. Their pilot personnel costs would go through the roof.

Majors really don’t want flow, they want a trickle, enough to keep the pipeline filled but with upgrade times and flow times long enough to keep those pilots on the lowest pay scales they can fir the longest time they can do it while they continue to plug older and (career wise)cheaper OTS hires in above them in mainline seniority.
Oh, they’ll take a few very young OTS hires too, just to keep all the applicants hopes up, but the real incentive is to keep pilots working at the cheapest place possible for as long as possible.

Anybody who thinks differently is kidding themselves.