Originally Posted by
CAirBear
What are you talking about? The only regionals to “fail” are Compass and Express Jet. Both closed shop well before the current regional pay increases. There are rumors of Blow Jet and one/two others having issues, but the fact remains no one has failed since this has started with legitimate pay.
Id argue that all remaining regionals (despite obvious CA attrition leaving for legacies) probably have a solid chance of replacing them when someone enters into the career-field at 1500 hours now flying a RJ at $90-100+ an hour vs $30 a few years ago.
I have a friend who is a banker. Has PPL/Inst on the side and has 900ish hours. It’s obvious his passion in life is flying, but getting his last 600ish hours and taking a MASSIVE pay cut at regional pay (what it was prior to now) wasn’t worth it. Now he’s seriously considering it.
QUESTION:
If a regional has 800 CAs and 1200 FOs and is losing 50 CAs and 20 senior FOs a month to the Legacy/LC/ULCC/ACMI world, how long can the regional survive by hiring guys like your banker friend once they have accumulated the additional 600ish hours of time they need for their ATP? Because attrition there matters even more than at NK. What percentage of people at NK DON’t have 1000 hours of 121 time by the time they are off first year pay? Some, I’ll grant you, who came from the part 135 or 91 world, but damn few. But almost everybody meets legal criteria to upgrade by year two. Not so the guy/gal starting at 0 121 time at a regional and getting 25 hours a month on reserve.
the regionals are contracting because of loss of CA and CA-eligible pilots. Why do you think they are giving massive bonuses for DECs?