Originally Posted by
kevin18
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.
The legacy unions have been pushing for in house for a long time, but it has historically been cheaper to maintain the C-scale regional whipsaw. I can’t imagine the current model surviving this kind of attrition. My guess is that if hiring continues at this pace, the 145/200’s are gone within 2 years due to fuel cost and staffing problems. The regionals will be left with the current number of 70/76 and some type of improved flow agreements. The legacies will staff through flow, military, and poaching other brands regional pilots before they can flow and LCC pilots. If we do end up in another 2008 or worse recession (a very real possibility), then all bets are off and they make up some other scheme.