Originally Posted by
Hedley
Considering that everyone is having trouble staffing their contracted flying, what is the solution? Continue to spread things thin over multiple companies, or consolidate into fewer large regionals? If the current market conditions continue, the retirement of the 50 seat aircraft will probably be accelerated due to staffing issues, but that still leaves the issue of who operates what is left. Definitely crazy times. Regionals can’t hire and upgrade fast enough to keep up with attrition, while the legacy airlines hire pilots without college degrees or PIC time coupled with hundreds of unfilled captain awards on every vacancy bid. My crystal ball is broken, hence the questions.
Yeah those are some great questions, who knows honestly. I don’t believe there’s going to be any consolation with mergers. They’ll probably fly as much dual class RJ’s as they can with the pilots they have and continue to shrink. The regionals who can’t afford to endure anymore attrition will shutdown. It’s really that simple at the moment.
Take a few minutes out of your day and go read the recent SkyWest earnings call. Every investor question was based around attrition, you’ll probably get a clear picture of the current solution for the regional pilot shortage. I’ll give you a hint, they don’t have with one. SkyWest operates the same way Delta operates, “we’ll wait for the data”. The Captain attrition “data” after these huge pay hikes has not settled down. They’re not going to like the data. The only question is what’s the next carrot they’re going to throw at regional pilots to keep them tied down.
United is in a weird spot though without any WO’s available to merge onto their mainline seniority list. I’ve heard American may already be preparing to go that direction. The TA that was recently offered to American’s pilot group has pay scales included for their RJ’s.