Originally Posted by WheelInTheBack

They could always do SOMETHING to just try to retain their highly qualified captains and FOs. The regionals should be bending over backwards to keep you right now instead of forcing an upgrade, and your new agreement shows exactly what many have preached: give just enough for it to be accepted. Management doesn’t give a rats ass about you guys. Some don’t want to upgrade for personal reasons, not just because of lackluster skills. That being said, aviation has always taught personal mins…and forcing an upgrade when someone maybe wants to zero in on perfecting themselves in some areas is exactly that. Doesn’t mean they’re in the wrong profession. In fact, I’d prefer to fly with some of those guys. I flew with a few captains there that probably should have waited.

Originally Posted by JohnBurke

Becoming a captain is't about monkey skills and control manipulation. It's about judgement. A thousand hours of flying time doesn't instill judgement. It adds a few pages to a logbook. there's a difference.

The issue of available direct-entry captains is facetious, given that few locations allow or have a mechanism for a direct entry captain.

The regional pilot upgrading is going for upgrade in nearly all cases, for the first time. That is, a person who has never been a captain before. The view from the right seat looking at an upgrade for the first time is quite different than other places where one may have been a captain several times before. The mere fact of having logged a thousand hours, which for some, if not many, is little more than having logged the same hour and thousand times, does not mean that one is prepared to make that first time leap and pop one's stem-hung reddened, pitted fruit.

There is further a difference between upgrading at a location occupied with highly experienced people with years of industry and flight experience, vs. an entry level job, and the regionals, despite gains in pay, are now and will always be entry level jobs.

One can only hope that by mandating upgrades, the airline is quite willing to fail any who are not fully ready, and will not be adjusting their sights to admit to the left seat the weak or those who ought not sit there. The only thing worse than flying with a first officer who thinks he's captain, is flying with a captain who thinks he's a captain, but it not.