Originally Posted by
Buford Justice
Sorry, but I don’t see it happening. The industry has changed, inflation made everything a lot more expensive since the last rates were negotiated. Skywest, Republic, Mesa, CommuteAir, GoJet all have significantly higher permanent rates than the AA wholly owned carriers. AA is going to roll back wholly owned pay rates while the rest of the industry continues to start around $100 and tops out around $230? Sorry, not gonna happen. Hopefully the days of Mesa being able to come in and underbid and then just do a completely ****ty job are far behind us. Quality lift isn’t cheap. Pay it or don’t, but the days of regional captains making 100K a year I think are behind us. AA isn’t losing its shirt because of RJ pilot pay, btw, let’s be serious. AA is making a bet it can serve more markets than UA and DL with big RJ’s because it’s has less restrictions on big RJ’s than the other carriers. It wouldn’t be making that bet if the lift was too expensive.
There is nothing permanent in airline CBA's
The days of them making $100k may be gone, but making $150k-$160k is certainly forseable again.
It won't be Mesa undercutting everybody, it will be you, Envoy. The snap back brings pilot costs down, making it much more economical to put additional flying at Envoy, and to even begin transfering flying from the contract carriers back to envoy. This will slow hiring at the contract carriers.
The pilot supply will be sufficient, and already there are thousands of pilots all trying to get regional jobs. If you think they won't take the envoy job for lower pay to get in, and get out sooner, then you're very mistaken. This wil force the contract carriers to accept pay cuts to retain flying. That's just how the whipsaw works.
Will it ever got back to poverty wages and food stamps for FO's.... I don't think so. I think management learned their lesson that in doing so, they eventually over a few decades killed the supply chain of people willing to spend hunreds of thousands to become pilots living on food stamps.... and as the wages dropped so the the hiring minimums until they had to resort to hiring ink wet commercial pilots, and they STILL couldn't staff the flying. That's why in 2015 they started increasing pay and improving working conditions.
The airline industry is very cyclical. What happened before, will happen again. Want to know the future? Look at the past.