Leinlodge and FlyByNuts, I could not agree more.
I hate to say "I told you so" but I told you so. About two years ago two individuals I know, very competent individuals who with approximately 600 hrs TT each were hired by Regional operators. My worry at the time, due to the hiring frenzy and so called pilot shortage was that as soon as people of this ilk reach 1500 hours they are given command of a 450 knot jet flying into some of the busiest airspace (and groundspace) in the world. They are doing that in bad weather, having to worry about pax issues, mx issues, ATC issues, everything involved in a command position.
Even if you are O.K. with that, consider that now their newly vacated right seat will be filled with, you guessed it, another wet behind the ears 600 hour pilot. That, in my opinion, was and is a disaster looking for a place to happen, my fears tragically manifested themselves in Buffalo.
One of the individuals I mentioned earlier was furloughed after about a year with about 1300 hours TT so then had ~700 in the right seat of an RJ. He is a very, very competent pilot, studies hard and demands a full understanding of the aircraft he flies and the environment in which he operates. He has been fortunate enough to get a position flying as a captain on a King Air, notwithstanding in depth FlightSafety training he still has faced many and varied challenges in his new role due to inexperience. (J. if you read this you may want to comment).
The bottom line is there is NO substitute for time in the seat. It is like anything else, golf, skiing, shooting you just gotta do the miles, Embry Riddle or not you just gotta do the miles.
The airlines are going to have to pay, sorry that is the way it has to be. The young lady in BUF wanted to call in sick but flew so she didn't have to buy a $55 hotel room! She had to commute to work because her $16,000 q year job couldn't support the cost of living at her assigned base (EWR I think.) What other profession in the world would tolerate this kind of abuse?
Of course the additional cost of crew salaries will have to be passed on to the consumer. Were that an easy thing to do I thing all the ailing carriers would be jacking up their fares. Apparently seat sales are very price sensitive and even an extra Dollar would be enough to make people go by alternative means or not at all, so we are told where I work. Then of course the media would be all over the fare hikes.
The flying public want experienced crews, they want no delays, they don't want to pay for it. They want the fly LGA to ??? at peak times but get pi$$ed off when when they are stuck on the airplane waiting to take off for an hour due to traffic saturation or just weather.
Just to put thing into perspective, the first time I came to the USA was in 1980, thirty years ago,my round trip fare was $1600 (1980 $s) on AA London Gatwick to DFW round trip, I can do it today for less than a quarter of that in 2009 $s, technology hasn't changed costs that much.
Just my $0.02
Sorry I have kind of digressed