I think DAL and UAL are $50/hr for the first year pay. Regardless, the answer is yes. The CA at a regional should not make more than an FO at a major. OK fine, but you said the lowest FO pay of the majors, which is the rate I posted. $50/hr would at least be somewhat reasonable. Were you one of those guys that thought it was it was an injustice that an E9 made more than you as an O2? Just curious.

Quite the opposite. Financially, the military can be very comfortable. In fact, many choose not to leave the military in this day and age due to not wanting to leave the comfort factor, so I really do understand. You may have missed my point, which was that you were earning good pay at sr. O3 or jr. O4 - comparable to that of a similarly-tenured regional CA. Why, in your eyes, is it OK for a mil pilot to stay in due to the comfort factor, but not for a regional CA to stay at their airline? Granted, at the end of the mil career, there are retirement benefits to be gained. But is it because everyone should want the same thing out of their airline career as you do?

You probably would be if we stopped giving jet flying to the regional level. As stated in my earlier post, anything over 70 seats should be mainline and at mainline wages. OK then. We agree. More mainline jobs is good for everyone. So get scope back. The regionals aren't going to give it to you, so you'll need to take it (or at the very least, keep it where it's at). SCOPE is the problem. Not regional CA's who like it where they are, so stop blaming them for perceived injustices.

Wow, and I guess you have. See, this is the problem. We've made it too good at the regional level, so now you can make statements like this as if you know everything there is to know because you've been "flying for the airlines." News flash, you should have been flying routes in and out of small airfields to service the major airlines, not the way the current system is set up. Regionals have no business flying into places like NYC, ATL, ORD, LAX, etc. This has created the airspace nightmare we have today. Regionals should only connect service to smaller hubs. The largest glass B airspace should be reserved for larger airplanes. And I have paid my dues. Trust me, my flying experiences really have been far more challenging in the military than you believe. Never said I have. I've been at this perhaps 6 months less than you. But the difference is, you don't hear me talking about how I've invested all this time and effort, bodily fluids, and combat time as if I had been fighting the good fight for pay, benefits, and QOL my whole life. When did your airline give away scope? Was it when you were working there? Yes, you have paid your dues, and I acknowledged that, but that wasn't the airlines. Post-military, you did what most everyone here has done: took the best pilot job available to you at the time, whether that be in terms of pay, QOL, or whatever was most important to you. If it isn't now what you expected it to be (or thought you were entitled to) when you first began your flying career, well, you always had the option of staying in and waiting for things to turn around. Hats off to you for taking the leap and making an effort to make things better.

Yes it does. The way you want it, and really, it's what we have today, is that a company like COMAIR (just as an example guys, there are many out there) can continue to grow larger and larger. Eventually, as is the case today, they reach a point where they have actually become a national (if not major) sized carrier. They do it for lower wages and end up taking jobs away from mainline carriers. In the end, it has hurt the profession as a whole. It should be a stepping stone, not a career goal as I stated earlier. And there is nothing wrong with a guy who wants to stay as a profession, it should just be capped in wages. Stop saying what I want. Scope = reduced regional capacity, increased mainline capacity = more mainline jobs, at least that's the way the theory goes.

I'll stop quoting you here, because getting scope back seems to be the common reply to all your arguments, and I think we can agree that it's an element of the solution. The regionals did not grow their ops first, and then wait for scope to be relaxed. Though I'm sure regional management wasn't sad when it happened, regional _pilots_ certainly aren't the ones to blame for decreased flying at the majors.

Reduced regional pay, though perhaps a side effect of any reversals in scope, isn't going to make things better and make all your airline dreams come true.