This came up on a major thread. A regional pilot claiming that he should be given a break for an early training failure because his regional hadn’t treated him properly. Now that’s not the sort of claim that is generally well received at any major, and he received a fair amount of pushback, but what he was CLAIMING in essence was that his regional couldn’t keep pilots - especially captains - and as a consequence had decided to intentionally fail people in training over relatively minor issues, then just do a quick remedial train and pass for the PURPOSE of screwing up their PRIA just to slow their career progression and keep them at the regional longer. He implied that similar things were done at the “mandatory CA upgrade” at minimums, the ostensible purpose being to keep them at the regional as long as possible and stop them from going to competitive majors as an OTS hire before they would eventually progress to the major that owned the regional, tainted PRIA or not.

Question 1. Is this really happening anywhere? I know the promised retention bonuses are getting (at least by preCOVID standards) huge, but are any regionals really so desperate for retention that they would intentionally screw over their own pilots records just to be able to keep people ?
Question 2. There clearly are major airlines that have built their business models around regional feed and using their regional fleet (owned or contract) to hold down hub gates. As regional pilots become scarcer, do regional pilots get higher rates to keep them? Or does that flying get converted to mainline flying? Or what?

Because the pilot shortage will start to really bite at the regionals long before it does at the majors.