Originally Posted by
12oclockHi
but both are looking to use the current employment environment to solve manning issues that could be handled with a carrot rather than a stick.
I don't think they can actually do that. The benefits of a career at a major have as much to do with the type of flying as management's willingness to pony up.
Bigger planes generate more revenue, with which to pay the pilots and provide great benefits.
Bigger planes almost always fly longer routes, which increases trip efficiency and QOL.
There's also the ego factor, while that's a personal thing, I'd guess it matters to at least 50% of pilots.
About the only thing regionals have going for them is bases in smaller towns... where majors do have bases in smaller, low tax locations they go very senior relative to the big hubs in major metro-area poop-holes.
Originally Posted by
12oclockHi
To the degree the marketplace for pilots votes with its feet to support this business model, it will only be a matter of time before there will be no choice for any pilot seeking this path into professional aviation. You may be too young to remember but most of these airlines, or the earlier renditions of them, had pay to play, buy your training and get a minimum wage for the honor of getting to fly a 19, 30, or 50 seat airplane. Time will tell where the shoe drops next regarding employment contracts.
Arguments were made 20-30 years ago by some regional pilots that they should get paid at high enough levels that their flying would operate at a loss. They would be subsidized by mainline flying, which relied on feed to the big hubs. That argument didn't prevail, and that was in an era where regionals actually did almost exclusively regional hub feed.
The fundamental problem is that if you raise the wages (cost) too much, the business becomes non-sustainable. Like what we see with fast food minimum wage mandates eliminating businesses and jobs. The business model doesn't support a single parent raising three kids with an upper-middle class lifestyle and sending them to college.... the customers will just go to Vons and cook their own dinner at home, vice paying $40 for burgers and fries.
The current regional wages are probably at or near the max sustainable... maybe even more than sustainable if the legacies are deliberately and temporarily subsidizing the regional model just to get it over the retirement wave hump. There probably won't be another retirement wave ever, many majors are intentionally hiring a diverse age group to avoid that down the line. It's no longer 1985, where you had to do your 5-7 year obligation at the fighter squadron and then scramble to get hired by the airlines before the age 30 cutoff.