Originally Posted by
Excargodog
What part of
Did you not get? Clearly if all subcontracting regionals go away, then - duh - subcontracting to other regionals ceases to be viable. But until or unless that happens, it’s still a viable pathway. In fact, Alaska is subcontracting to Skywest right now in competition to their own regional.
They are unable to hire enough at Horizon, so they are currently using Skywest to fill gaps. That won’t continue long. The regionals are contracting through attrition. The old game of outsourcing the flying to somebody cheaper only works when there is somebody cheaper to do it.
oh, and both Spirit and Frontier already have agreements with a few universities to take their graduates straight from school. As that dynamic increases where do you expect places like Skywest to get their pilots?
the only places that will get pilots are ones with a guaranteed flow to the mainline in a reasonable time period. Otherwise you’d be foolish not to take the LCC right out of college.
times have changed, the old dynamic of outsourcing to the cheapest regional doesn’t work if they can’t staff it.
nope, the new dynamic isn’t cheap contracts; it’s whomever has the pilots to do the flying. Pilot Staffing is the new currency.