Originally Posted by
rickair7777
Few people who get hired at a regional understand any of the industry dynamics into which they are getting involved. That's stuff you learn after talking to senior pilots during cruise flight. The large majority of regional pilots were simply following the established career path for civilian pilots. Nobody knew where it was all going to end up.
I would ask what would you propose that entry level pilots do instead of regionals, except I already know there is no rational alternative answer for most (there are nowhere near enough corporate/135 jobs to train all the airline-bound pilots).
What's the solution? Relying on CFI's to understand long-term career dynamics and ramifications and to selflessly give up their dreams and goals so mainline current mainline pilots can enjoy lucrative, stable careers? Yeah...
Any solution has to be achievable using the existing power levers. "Well I think it should be this way" is just mental masturbation.
The only solution I can think of is for mainline unions to insist that ALL of their flying is done by pilots on their seniority list. The challenge is that long-term feed contracts with regionals would be too expensive for mainline to just cancel. The regional pilots could still be employed by regionals (thus achieving some savings on non-pilot labor) but their compensation would be negotiated by the mainline union and would be the same for all regionals operating under that banner. The pilots could bid into mainline flying when seniority permits.
This would take pilots out of the whipsaw equation within any one brand. There are a few logistics and cultural challenges but these could be sorted out.
Got any better ideas? I honestly can't think of anything else that is remotely practical.
Good post, and very reasonable arguments. There isn't any practical short term solution. Inevitably, like all things airline, this was going to be a cyclical manpower model. The CRJ-200 came out and everyone wanted a million of them. They are essentially money losing tin cans now at the current price of oil. The CRJ-700 was the next savior; now it's becoming clear that to be profitable we need to be at 90-100 seats. Funny because that's getting close to the size management parked when they claimed they needed the 50 seaters.
I guess the point is that it appears that regional pilots are in for some painful times. The pendulum appears to be shifting back towards bigger, and with that shift, there is some momentum for some of the flying that had left mainline to come back. The gyrations of that will probably be as fun for the regional folks as it was for the mainline folks when we lost it.
I noticed nobody touched my point about having been threatened jumpseat denial by Skywest pilots in the recent past, but I never took that personally. ***Disregard last, just saw Hayduke's post**** I frankly just didn't really care. Sure I wanted to get home to my family, but it just was what it was. I figured a few times of me not making it to work because I was denied a Skywest jumpseat was going to get the situation cleared up by management one way or another..... but because UAL bought the seat, I figured it was probably going to end badly on the Skywest side.
I hope that this works out with a happy ending for all, as its not lost on me that we are all pilots, and any infighting takes our focus off being united, which is where we really CAN get stuff done.
For a long time I thought our management was really stupid. I learned over the past however many years that they are BRILLIANT when it comes to dividing and conquering, demoralizing, and shrinking. What they aren't so good at is doing the opposite. Maybe its all the years of practice doing the former that makes them so bad at the latter. An example: why, as we approach a JCBA between the pilot groups, would the new UAL management press to test this issue? They have done a GREAT job at strengthening the resolve of the CAL, and frankly the UAL pilots as well to make sure that Scope is the #1 issue for this new contract. The only solution I see is to make sure that we don't sign a new contract that at LEAST phases out the 70 seat flying from the Regional airlines. Putting the 70's in IAH just makes that more clear for everyone and strengthens the resolve. Probably not what management really intended.
As I said, nice post, and thanks for the thoughtful argument.