Originally Posted by
DMH1967
Yes Covid caused a lot of early retirements, heck I was one of them. But there are still a LOT more retirements happening for a long time. As you say the scramble might not be as frantic, but getting people to stay in a job is important for all airlines to be viable. And yes there are markets that can only support RJ sized planes, but I don't see the pay rates coming back down to what they were any time soon. If they're paying similar wages to fly an E175 to a 73 or A320, there is no reason to keep the flying separate from mainline. Of course that's just my opinion. If I could have said where this Industry would go over the last 30 years, my career choices for airline and bases ,moving across the country, would have been wildly different.
Again, you aren’t looking at the BIG picture. It’s not just the pilots, which are obviously a big expense, but it’s EVERY employee in the regional model that saves money. As long as some bean counters see that the sum of the model saves money, it will remain.
And those LOT of retirements that everyone talks about ARE being mitigated. They just can’t be in this short of time. Bottom line is the industry F’d this whole thing up by taking government money and paying people to retire instead of remain current. It will take about 24 months for that whole pipeline to refill. Higher wages overall plus all the sponsored flight program to bring a wider variety of people into flying. This whole thing is an ECON 101 supply and demand example.