Originally Posted by
ZBowFlyz
I disagree. EAS stole a huge number of (real) charter jobs. How did those people travel before EAS showed up in thier town?
I have been following this thread and I would like to state my opinion. The first is that 121 flying is only one type of flying in the aviation world. Another thing is that a great number of my/our 135 charter jobs have been lost because we cant compete with a "gobment" funded program. BTW First year pay on a twin cessna in 2009 was a salary of 38K (for me atleast)... our planes made money on those routes without government handouts.
I don't mean to wish you guys out of your jobs but it's hard not to be a little bitter when we see the things we see every day. Our Charters have slowed way down while the number of pax flying stays the same.
The way I see it was we were doing fine. I was fairly compensated. The locals that needed to fly chartered a flight. Now, three 1900's fly in a day. Not one flight has more than 5 people on it. On your route I burn 55 gal, a 1900 is burning 190-200 gal.
What makes this program worth the money when there were guys already there doing it right? Maybe some towns needed it but mine sure didn't.
Just my opinion, flame away!
No flaming from me. But, I think you were, just maybe, flying for a failing business. I'm not sure you could directly attribute it to EAS. Chances are, the city was set up as EAS well before the charter company started, anyway, so they should have been aware of that fact and planned for that, prior to setting up the business. There is a little market overlap, I admit, but I don't believe it would be enough to send a charter company to the grave. I worked for a charter company (not as a pilot), before I flew for Lakes, that was within a 20 minute drive of one of the largest hubs in the country. They had no issue making money, and felt very little direct competition from the major airlines. A lot of smaller charter companies actually compensate their workers pretty poorly, and provide zero benefits. The one I worked for compensated their King Air pilots less than I am compensated in the 1900. In the 1900, I can think of only a few destinations that we serve, that are served by a charter company, as well. I don't believe the actual effect is quite as dramatic as you make it out to be, but I admit, there may be a little market overlap, and a small negative effect to the charter industry. But, we probably have 2-3 pilots jobs created, for every charter pilot job that may, or may not have been lost, as a result of EAS. We do need to negotiate higher compensation; I have no excuse for that. It should be directly in-line with industry average on type/ aircraft size. We're working on that. Final point. How many major airline jobs are created as an indirect result of EAS? I would reckon that the number is pretty significant. Remember, almost all EAS providers have code shares, or fly as express carriers for major airlines. We feed people to the hubs, to travel on the majors. Most of our business doesn't involve people just looking for a flight to the hub. They are looking at going to another final destination, which will involve flying on a major airline. Charter companies aren't specifically established to feed people to the hubs, like the EAS program is, and they don't have code share agreements, which provides the majors with money and passengers. How many major airline jobs would be eliminated, if we abandoned EAS, and charter expanded to the point where it was actually taking away major airline jobs; Example: It would be cheaper and faster to charter an aircraft to get a group of executives to a final destination, over chartering a bus to drive your executives 300 miles, to the hub, so they could hop on a major airline, and eventually fly to their final destination. Without EAS, not only would you miss out on the direct feed to the majors, more people would completely bypass the airline system to get to their final destination, both resulting in the elimination of major airline jobs in significant numbers.