Originally Posted by
Hedley
I could see where it could hurt pilot recruitment from any source other than a branded regional. Military pilots or pilots from regionals outside of the brand wouldn’t want to go to brand X knowing that a bunch of regional pilots would come in on top of them when their flow number comes up and extend their time on reserve or prevent bidding more desirable bases.
Agreed, I also think that most people, early on, have an idea which legacy they would like to go to. A program like this would help to staff their regionals.
Also, I think the percentage of military pilots hired by the legacies is only going down as the military throughput of pilots has continually decreased through the years and that trend is likely to continue as UAS takes on larger roles.
There only seems to be two options, either find a way to maintain the regionals or bring them in house entirely. I think they would like to do the former over the later, the later does the same effective thing as any military pilot coming I will have the seniority to hold a 175 and will take just as long to get out of that if they had regional pilots leapfrogging them when they decide to come up. So, it’s in the military pilots best interest to have a regional pilot gain seniority there rather than flying the same metal at a legacy.