Flydenver

I heard from one of my C5 contacts that the company is below 400 pilots now and still shrinking. Their DEC bonus isn’t attracting pilots and FOs are leaving just as fast as they’re getting hired. Apparently a new contract is in the works but I think that pilots are realizing there is no reason to fly for Conmuteair when they could go to a LCC and get to a mainline faster than the Aviate flow. I’m wondering, is CommuteAir going to be the next regional to join the graveyard in the sky?

AerChungus

Take this with a grain of salt from an FO heading to a non-UA legacy, but I really don't think they are gonna bite the dust any time soon. There are 335 bid eligible pilots in November but that's only down from 351 this winter. We still have 93% as many captains as we did at the beginning of the year.

FOs are certainly not leaving just as quickly as they are getting hired; we stopped hiring in ~May when we had 194 FOs and are now down to 186. We've produced 20-30 FOs in the training center in that time. I would say that most people, at least on the FO side, realize the flow is garbage and are either trying to go to an LCC (which have slowed down hiring on the whole btw) or just suck it up until the legacies. A lot more FOs have stayed than I would have thought when I got hired, mostly due to the company's tendency to hire 1000 hour rATPs who think Frontier is beneath them and their ERAU degree. Reserve time in IAD is over a year long now.

On the captain side, they can't get high time FOs and recent upgrades to stay. However, the majority of the people with more than 6 months in the left seat are either Australians, 55+ y/o ExpressJeters who don't want to learn a new plane and lose year 20 pay, people who have some pretty big skeletons in the closet, and people who live in rural areas like 2.5 hours from IAD/IAH/DEN and would have to do that drive AND commute to go to another airline. None of those demographics are going to leave in substantial numbers.

I won't lie, I think that we are not performing at the level that we would like. We are running razor thin on CA staffing and our 145s are long in the tooth. Our reserve rules are the worst in the industry, maybe second to Mesa. This is not what I would consider a "good place to work" and I wouldn't try to stop anybody from leaving Aviate to go to a place like Spirit or JetBlue - honestly I think a career at JetBlue would be considerably more stable than gambling that Aviate will even exist in a few years or that it will even be worth missing 5 more years of hiring to sentence yourself to 25 Christmases of EWR-RDU on the 737. But ultimately, I don't see us doing a whole lot worse than we were at the beginning of the year and I don't think we are doing worse than Mesa, GoJet, or even SkyWest. We have lost some routes to mainline, but so has everybody else. In fact, our STAR/CD0/CCF is pretty regularly #1 in UAX. That being said, I just don't see why United would suddenly want to pull the rug out from CommuteAir now when they could've done it at the beginning of the year

LizzyBorden

No LAX no ORD no SFO. You better rank high on a consistent basis, as you have it easy.

AerChungus

We have the same exact bases as Mesa. SkyWest and Republic may have EWR/ORD/LAX between them, but they also have the luxury of IND/CMH/PIT/BOI/COS/FAT to balance things out. No reason those guys can't compete with us

GoJet has EWR/ORD with only STL to offset. I'll give them a pass there, fair's fair

LizzyBorden

You said

"In fact, our STAR/CD0/CCF is pretty regularly #1 in UAX."

Crew bases have nothing to do with having a large presence in hubs that are notorious for causing garbage performance metrics.

CRJCapitan

Correct, I promise SkyWest operates far more flights from LAX than it does FAT and Republic operates far more out of EWR than CMH. Republic probably operates about the same amount of flights, if not more, out of JFK as it does out of CMH or SDF and it's not a base.

overqualified52

The writing is on the wall for all regional . The regional model was and always will be a scam . The current attrition and LCC/ Major/ Trunk airline hiring is just exposing it for what it really is. A sham and a shell game .

LizzyBorden

Which speaks volumes for a person like yourself that used the "scam" to get where you are.

overqualified52

wouldn’t call 30 years at a regional really “getting” anywhere 😂. Still doesn’t change the fact that regionals are a scam. Unless you’re military , the only way to a bigger airline is through the shady regionals , the only exception being Frontier in which one can get hired strait from Flight instructor.

TransWorld

I have said for quite a few years, the number of regional pilots would go down to half of where it was. The number of regional airlines, after the shake out and consolidation, will be one fourth. People called me crazy.