Originally Posted by rickair7777

Obviously increased CBA compensation is good for us. That would be my choice if it were up to me. Duh.

But while that might attract the interest of more noobs, there's not a big difference between $200K- 300K from the perspective of a teenager or college grad... anything in that range is pretty good. Problem is they still have to bridge the 1500 hour valley. A lot of time and money invested, with some uncertainty as to the ultimate outcome. There are a lot of people out there who don't have aviation friends or family, and thus have no idea how to go about it.

With an airline owned or sponsored training program, the airlines could get ab initio pilots to the regionals for about $150K each... so the cost of a junior legacy FO for one year.

Remember regionals are already throwing around cumulative bonuses in that range anyway (and mainline is ultimately footing the bill). If you do sponsored ab initio, the student is obligated to serve X number of years at your regional and/or mainline as payback.

The current regional bonuses are just fighting for qualified pilots. Ab initio would attract new pilots. Especially since they don't have to take a lot of responsibility on themselves, other than complete training.


But this is just discussion, the ship has already sailed and it would probably take the majors several years to get something like this set up. They might even have to get the mfgs to increase production of ASEL trainers to have enough capacity. They assumed the GA industry would step up on their own, and of course they could not. COVID-induced industry uncertainty probably spooked a few potential students as well (mu cousin's husband bailed on his flight training in early 2020).