Originally Posted by
DangleDunlops
Alaska doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The more desperate the other airlines get, the more vulnerable Alaska becomes. A large airline, by itself, could bring Alaska to its knees by hiring our pilots. The cumulative effect of hiring qualified pilots out of the pipeline forces Alaska to remain competitive, even if it further drops minimum hiring requirements.
I’ve heard this numerous times for much smaller carriers, like when Virgin was only about 600 pilots. “The legacies can shut down Virgin, all they have to do is hire all 600 pilots over 3 legacies in 6 months!” It. Never. Happens. Heard the same things about Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, Sun Country, even jetBlue when they were smaller. It’s just pilot group think that’s not grounded in the reality of legacy airline hiring practices.