Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Since this is sort of a unique situation, your analysis is likely equally probable with mine. But I think it ignores a few things.
The comeback from COVID has ALSO placed an enormous training burden in the legacies and despite some of them trimming their fleets, they all still have multi type fleets. Every single vacancy bid creates a domino effect, not just one new type rating but oftentimes two or three, and some of those training departments are still trying to catch up on the training required of their existing pilots. For NK every single pilot can fly every single aircraft, and somebody moving into the left seat is a simple upgrade, not a new type for three other guys as they play the 737 to 777 to 778 shuffle with FOs. The training needs of a multi type fleet are VASTLY greater than those of a single type fleet and always will be. And as long as those different types pay different amounts, there will always be churn. And that is costly, even just as downtime, because people in classes and sims are not flying the line. Once again I see this as - advantage ULCC.
And the breakup of the regionals is going to hurt the legacies far more than the ULCCs. Already the regionals are having to contract their schedules due to losing so many CAs. You are going to find a lot of FOs stranded - hired during COVID or slightly before who spent a year on reserve who will have four or five hundred hours of 121 time - nowhere near upgrade - who will fly less and less because there aren’t enough CAs to support the flying. Look at the bonuses the regionals are offering for DECs. They are desperate. So when the more vulnerable of the regionals go under because they don’t have enough CA’s to fly their lines, where are those mid-level FOs going to go? To start over at another regional? He//, why not a ULCC, new and more desirable type. As long as your seniority is shot anyway, why not? You might like it enough to make a career of it, rather than starting all over as the plug at another regional.
And yes, management is going to have to pony up some money to make it happen, certainly give insurance coverage and better pay to new hires and more to everyone else as well, but they already knew they’d have to do that at the next CBA anyway. They just need to not drag it out and to do it a few years quicker than they thought, to take advantage of a huge opportunity.
No question the regionals are in a worse way than the ULCCs, but in the short term that may not matter. As unless a regional goes out of business tomorrow there is not going to be a flood of available pilots for Spirit until it is too late to matter for this summer.
Remember the churn that you speak of at the big three is actually getting minimized. For instance right now at UA they are putting off the street new hires into every fleet. So, there is no churn out of the NB FO seat to fill the 777/787 demand. Those folks are coming entirely from regionals/ULCCs and military. So in the past that churn on the low end was a problem for the big three, but right now that problem has been transferred from the big 3 to the regionals and ULCCs. Additionally, since the big 3 had the advantage of knowing well in advance how much they wanted to train this winter and spring they were able to take action to get their training capacity spooled up much earlier. For any ULCC that is just now reacting to that need, I think is too late.
All of this is why I believe that the summer schedule for airline travel is going to be an absolute mess. Regionals aren't going to be able to cover anywhere near what the big 3 are going to want. ULCCs aren't going to be able to grow and a number of them are going to need to shrink. The first significant weather system on a weekend is going to lead to meltdowns everywhere.
I do think that the regionals are going to suffer the most and that in the mid term will help the ULCCs and in the long term help us all. But I think everything between now and the end of August is going to be one staffing @#$%show after another, especially at the regionals and the ULCCs. I would not want to be a commuter out of a station that only had regionals or ULCCs!
Ironically I think that the ones that are going to fair the best is anyone that actually is aggressive in the pulldown category, but the $$ involved don't usually translate into people following that plan. I can write a plan on paper that will show it can work, that wont last 2 minutes into the actual operation and that is with the manpower plan being accurate. Imagine what it will look like when you have to throw out the manpower plan from a month ago because you have 2-3% less First Officers!