I can't get over how messed up the regional/commuter/outsourced airline flying jobs scheme has become.

All to keep costs low, the airlines contract out up to 50% of their block hours to pilots who are paid a fraction of the salary just so they can "gain experience to get to the majors".... and dream about it and talk about gaining 'pic time' just to get to Alaska, FedEx or UPS all while not focusing on the job at hand: maintaining airspeed on approach into BUF. Redeye commutes across the country with a cold, just to 'gain experience' to hopefully get to the majors some day.

Ridiculous.

"Gain experience". Isn't that something that we did back in flight school? Isn't that something that should be necessary to get hired into a professional job? Nowadays, the regionals think that 'gaining experience' is something that is done with 50 to 86 passengers in the back, all who paid good money for a ticket on Continental/American/Delta and their outstanding safety cultures, not Mesa/Colgan/Pinnacle and their bottom-feeding budgets.

Why must a pilot applying to Continental have extraordinary flight experience and a robust resume, when the Colgan pilots at the next gate over sitting in an aircraft with the same paint have "almost no actual IMC experience" when they are hired?

Doesn't the flying public deserve a little bit more than that? Don't 'regional' pilots deserve a little better pay distribution from the 'major' pilots? Don't the passengers deserve better flight safety programs than what Colgan and Mesa have for rock bottom cultures?

As a regional pilot I am sick of flying safely and professionally for just $20,000 a year just to help produce more and more profits for the majors so the pilots at the next gate over can earn 8 to 10x more than me.


My suggested solution? No regionals. A more experienced Continental pilot could have been at the controls going into BUF that night, bring more experience to the cockpit than the relatively small amount that the Colgan hiring pool brings.

Why do we have FOs at the majors getting paid more than captains at the regionals?

The money before safety aspect of the way airlines run in this country is out of my mind, and ALPA doesn't do much about it, in my opinion. Prater, are you reading this? Probably not.