Originally Posted by
CALTEX
1. Get rid of PIC requirement for Mainline job. Replace with 5 year 121 experience. After 5 years, you are more than qualified to sling gear at the majors. This will solve all the problems of racing to the bottom to get that coveted PIC time. How many guys take crappy jobs with low pay, terrible work rules, sadistic management, and etc., just to get PIC? Who would take a job at a bottom feeder if all they need is years and not PIC?
2. Mainline guys stop giving up SCOPE to save pay, jobs or to get a shiny jet. The regional jet should have been mainline flying. Any plane that can leave the "region" should have been mainline. The jobs would have come back, the pay would be better than it is now, and the company is going to get the jet anyway. How many DC-3's are still flying?
3. Be willing to sacrifice. Do not pick up OT when staffing is low, or worse, guys on the street. Do not sell out your junior guys! Yes, you have been there, done that, but that doesn't mean it is someone else's turn to eat the sh.t sandwich. Ten years ago the senior guys sold SCOPE to save their A$$es and now it is the very thing that is killing the profession.
I'm sure you can all add something, but these are the three things that I see need to be addressed.
You are trying to close the door after the horse's have all run away...
Mainline job? There aren't any. They aren't hiring. They have retirements just as they always have been, but they are also shrinking because they know all the growth will be at "regional" and "nationals"... doesn't matter if they use 20 years experience, or 10,000 hours flight time... there has to be a job for them to hire, and the proliferation of people willing to fly transport category jets for peanuts has ruled out any possibility of there being mainline growth. If there is a Mass retirement when the age 60 folks hit 65, there may be some hiring, but nowhere near enough for all the ME generation to get "their" seat.