Originally Posted by Excargodog

You see it in thread after thread, hear it from fellow jumpseaters. Too few CAs. Too many FOs. It looks like a system near collapse.

Historically (ie, a few years pre COVID), people (excepting military flyers doing a touch and go after a decade of flying a desk) often languished in the regionals for years. Excepting those ex-military, 1000 TPIC was considered sort of entry level to be CONSIDERED for a legacy FO job and most successful applicants had far more. As a regional FO, you NEEDED 1000 hrs of SIC to be upgrade eligible but you might have to get a couple thousand hours to actually have the seniority to successfully bid for an upgrade, then having made CA, you might have spent awhile on reserve before you could seriously start gaining TPIC. So most regional CAs might spend a half decade or more as a CA before they got the call and a lot didn’t get the call at all, settling into a sort of ‘bloom where you are planted’ mode and becoming regional lifers. It was a slow trudge for many in the regionals but the model was functional - that is, self sustaining. But that was then and this is now.

At the start of COVID the Big Three legacies we’re expecting the decrease in flying to last longer than it eventually turned out it did. They already had near record numbers of age related retirements coming, but they incentivized early retirements for even more of their senior pilots. They got rid of a whole lot of people. WN did the same with their oldest pilots. But flying came back quicker than people imagined at a time when military flyers were also in short supply and military training had been cut back for a decade. When that flying came back so quickly, the Big Four had to hire lots of people. The most readily available source was the regional world. That’s when the regional model came under pressure.

Regional CAs with less than 1000 TPIC and even senior regional FOs started being hired at the Big Four, and other majors. ULCCs went even deeper into the regional FO pool. And the regional model soon started to show signs of failure. The question now is; Is the regional model still self-sustaining?

The most limiting factor appears to be the 1000 hr of 121 SIC retirement for upgrade. That drives the whole system. But as CAs started to leave, the pool of upgrade eligible (and willing) FOs also began to be drained. Generally you need more CAs than FOs, but suddenly those ratios were reversed and as more and more experienced FOs left for majors as well, the flying had to contract because there were not enough CAs to do the job. But as zero 121-time FOs were added at the bottom and experienced FOs left for majors the average experience level of FOs went well below the historical level. Many regionals simply didn’t have the FOs they needed who were upgrade eligible to fill their CA classes.

So right now a lot of regionals are paying big bucks for DECs and heavily working their remaining ‘lifers’ - those with too much invested in where they are and the seniority they have to be tempted away to a major. But DECs are becoming harder to find, ‘lifers’ are also retiring, and in many regionals the CA shrinkage only continues. And the more the CA group contracts, the more the incentive for even the ‘lifers’ to look elsewhere, because if the regional actually does fold they’ll be looking for another job anyway. Same for the FOs who can be competitive at even a ULCC. If their regional IS going to implode, they’ll perhaps be better off being at a ULCC - using it as a stepping stone - rather than a regional that may contract out of business. Nobody wants to be the one with no chair when the music stops and if something doesn’t change (a recession maybe?) that may happen in several regionals. That well might accelerate the process as things get tighter.

So is the regional model still self sustaining? Or is it imploding?