Heyas,

One piece of the puzzle that is missing is what the Feds plan to do with rest/duty time requirements, which is something they've already been working on before Congress decided to jump in a say "hey, we're doing something".

If the FAA DOES make any headway, and proposes, and ultimately adopts any meaningful improvements to rest/duty requirements, this will most certainly drive a requirement for additional pilots.

Lets ASSUME, for a second, that such a change forces the airlines to increase staffing JUST enough to cover by their furloughees, which currently may be anywhere from 0-10 percent of their current workforce. So if we start from "zero", that is everyone recalled, any meaningful improvement in the economy might lead to hiring.

I've been around the block to see a number of hiring cycles. The little, tiny "boomlet" we experienced in '05-'08 was nothing. NOTHING. Back in the late 80s, AA, UA, CO, AAA, NWA, even TWA... ALL the majors were running classes with 40-60 a month FOR YEARS on end. AA and UA had peaks, sometimes hiring over 100 a month in class. Following the recession of the early 90's, things picked up again, but not quite a strong. Still, hiring was brisk, and 40-60/mo was not uncommon, and again, this went on for nearly 6 years after the last furloughee was recalled.

Yet not once did the hiring picture get so grim at the commuters that they had to hire people with less than 1000 hours. Even with the eyepopping (by today's standards) throughput numbers, the hiring requirements at the commuters was relatively high. 500 or 600 hours? With 100 multi? You would have been laughed out of any chief pilot's office.

What was the difference between 06-08 and then? First, the overall numbers that the majors hired was MUCH smaller and for a MUCH shorter period of time. Second, the pool of available pilots was MUCH larger, given the quantity of experienced regional pilots was greater than it ever had been in the past. Yet some airlines, even "mature" regionals, such as American Eagle, HAD to hire people with far less than 1,000 hours simply to maintain schedule integrity.

Even if you stop to consider that the regionals were expanding, the vast throughput of pilots in the "pipeline" was only a shadow of what it was in the 80's and 90's.

The reason? Quite simply, the money for the job is no longer worth it. I hate to use the term "back in the day", BUT, an airline job, where you could make 100K your 3rd year, and 200k by your 10th or 12th year, working 11-13 days a month, and where, even if you never saved a penny, you could expect a 10k/mo check at retirement was a fraking winning lotto ticket.

And that's in 1990 dollars.

It's no wonder people were motivated. Fly a 310 at night while living in your car? No problem. Fly a BE-99 out of East Butthole, Minnestoa doing essential air service? No problem. Places had hundreds of apps, all above ATP mins, lined up for the job.

And now you're telling me that a ****y little spurt in hiring, where less than a few hundred were hired at some majors over the course of 2 years bled the regionals to the point where they had to hire wet ticket commercial pilots?

I call BS. The REAL reason they had to do that is A) the crap jobs were expanding and B) No one wanted to work a crap job for the rest of their career. The few good jobs left were dissipating as quickly as Bombardier and Embraer could churn out RJs, and the majority of people don't see that as a career. Even the lucky few who did get major jobs faced a lot more work, a lot less pay, and no retirement other than what they put away for themselves.

Anyone who was smart enough to pour pee out of a boot without reading instructions on the heel knew that it was a money losing proposition, and bailed out (or never started) for more lucrative positions...lawyer, doctor, or taco stand operator. The few that were left were highly unmotivated by older standards.

I was waiting to commute to my own carrier to work. A "regional" guy was in line behind me grousing about how the flights were always full....mind you this was a mainline station, and his carrier had zero operations here. The only way for him to get to work was to do an offline commute, and it was one notorious for being tough, even for mainline guys. So I asked him why the heck he does it, and just live in base a few years.

His answer? "Oh, I hate it there...there's nothing fun to do there...I'd never do this job if I couldn't commute" (and yes, he had an iPod). THAT is the mentality of today's generation...forget the hard work, or heck, even a few years of living someplace else, so it should come as no surprise that there was a shortage of people willing to put the time and effort to get to 1,500 hours, let alone put up with the endless BS of life at a regional. NO ONE wants to put up with that BS when there is no payoff at the end.

Let's not forget the price of admission. 50-80k for all your ratings. Honestly, there are better things rich kids can do with that money (like crack), and these days, NO one is going to take out, let alone get, loans for that kind of jack. Even if they could, they'd be stupid to do so, considering the pittance of a reward.

The rest/duty time issue will probably wind up driving some hiring, but ironically, QoL at the regionals will probably go down. With the ATP as a minimum, there will simply be NO one to do that job at current compensation rates. Raise the compensation, and the costs to the mainline will probably just induce them to insource the flying (where they would have some measure of quality control) , or eliminate it entirely. Throw in some marginal loss of revenue by forcing airlines to advertise "HEY LOOKIE HERE! WE'VE OUTSOURCED YOUR FLIGHT TO THE LOWEST BIDDER", and it quickly becomes a losing proposition all around, providing, ironically a safer product because the mainline winds up doing more of it or eliminating it.

Labor issues and Safety...inexorably intertwined and hopelessly complex.

Nu