Originally Posted by
PhantomHawk
Once you get out of the regional world, you VERY quickly see the error in thinking any regional is better than another. They all exploit their labor and bid low to win flying that the pilots will then subsidize. Get your time, get out. Whether it be LCC or ACMI or Major.....get to one of them and then decide what your long term future is.
I respectfully disagree. It's one thing to say that regional contracts suck compared to LCC/ACMI/Majors, and I'd certainly agree with that. It's also one thing to say that the regional model works off of undercutting bids. I'd agree with that, too.
But it's a completely different thing to basically put them all on a level playing field. It's precisely that type of attitude that can result in no improvements for anyone. The only way things will improve at the regionals is when people start voting with their feet. Whether that's pilots on property leaving a "bad" regional, or with people not yet on property choosing to go somewhere else because their situation is "better."
You don't have to have left the regionals to understand that we (the regional pilots) are being exploited. And maybe from a high-level when you're making $250K+ a year at a larger carrier with a much better contract/work rules the differences between the regionals look small, but that doesn't mean they're not significant differences among them. None (few) of us are here by choice; we'd all much rather be working with better contracts and higher pay, and I'm not going to stand in the way of that happening at all. But in the interim, every regional pilot who "sucks it up" at a regional with a crappy contract just to get in and get out is tacitly admitting their value, or lack thereof. This hurts the pilot group as a whole.