It occured to me in late 1995 that the 121 Supplementals were the "undiscovered country". I found a niche, made a LOT of money, and had a better life.

-Something comes to mind: The people in the HR departments at the various 121 Supplementals monitor this stuff constantly, and I'm sure that very soon they are going to realize what I realized about 11 years ago- that people WANT to come here. The regionals are imploding; their pay scales have become too high due to longevity, and all that is necessary for those airlines to disappear is for the major airline partner to declare bankruptcy. Don't think so? Look at what happened to Atlantic Coast Airlines. Their major airline partner [United] went into bankruptcy, and their contract came up. United basically proposed to ACA a United Express contract that would have meant losses to ACA. Rather than ask the ACA ALPA and AFA units on the property for givebacks, they decided to try to be their own airline on the east coast.

[I worked at ACA; the management was clueless, and the place fell on its' face. The sad part is that a lot of very nice people lost their jobs last January. Kalitta Air picked up a bunch of these guys.]

"Independence Air" burned kerosene and dollars, and shut down in January.

Part 121 Supplementals can do the "Passenger Pigeon" thing too [I worked at Express One International], but at least you have some quality of life and you will always make money at these places....since it is WAY more profitable to fly a pound of boxes than it is to fly a pound of flesh!

-I kept this secret, this "undiscovered" end of the industry to myself for years. I suspect that kind of like Florida real estate over the past 5 years [with the exception of 2006]...it is going to suddenly become REAL popular to be a 121 Supplemental pilot!

I'm glad to be leaving the whole thing. Thanx!

N!