Originally Posted by
AerChungus
So next time there is a downturn, I would expect the legacies to start the whipsaw again as we hit the low point of the cycle in this industry. We saw it happen most recently with CommuteAir and ExpressJet and I wouldn't be surprised to see American decline to renew their pay raises with their WOs, for United to try to whipsaw Mesa, CommuteAir, and GoJet against each other, and for Delta to maybe even try to see if they can get Republic and Skywest to butt heads. All the while, a lot of the "borrowed" flying that mainlines are doing in house, e.g. SLC-STL, will get farmed back out to the 175s as scope clauses allow. Why? Because as others said, they will pay regional pilots as little as they can. And when the supply and demand curve is reversed, they will look to drive costs down all over again. This is the whole reason they kept the regionals afloat for the past 3 years, so that they could wait until the hiring environment stabilized and then bring things back to the status quo. It was cheaper than letting them fail and permanently have mainline do the flying in-house. It's the very definition of the business model; do mainline flying for the same revenue at a lower operating expense.
At least that's what's written on my tin foil hat
I’m pretty sure the majors have run up against the limits of their scope clauses, hence some of the flying going back to respective mainlines. Unless management can somehow increase utilization (while remaining in the scope clause), I don’t see regionals getting more flying.
Like any other market, supply and demand will see-saw for a bit. Now that word has spread that 1,000-1,500 hours and a pulse won’t get a person a regional class date, and especially if wages go backwards, I believe the numbers of student pilot certificate issuances will drop. Every other thread on Reddit is “1500hrs when hired?!?!?” Eventually the majors will resume hiring (we are looking at you Boeing!!!), and the regionals will get caught with their pants down, again.