My thoughts exactly. DFW 145 hasn’t seen critical coverage in many months.

 

No kidding...fingers crossed its coming soon

 

If you are wondering, no I do not work in management for Envoy, AA, nor any airline.

My agenda is to present factual information and get people to think logically. That is all.

If ‘50 percent is 50 percent’, when AA retirements hit peak (in 5 years), half of all their hires are estimated to be 800 pilots. Aside from lifers, that would mean Envoy would lose about 80% of their flowable CA in just one year. Great for those CAs.

Mull it over silently, without posting here. Is it sustainable? What would happen? What are the ramifications for the rest of the pilots that fly for Envoy?

My goal is not to have a debate. My goal is to get people to think things through, looking at the numbers.

 

Here’s a realistic question, with all the other legacies along with cargo and decent other airlines having the same level of retirements, where do you think these pilots are going to come from?

 

At peak, in about 5 years, I estimate 1 in 5 regional pilots will be hired each year by the majors. 80% of the flow interested CA at Envoy each year would be significantly higher than that average. (Quick math - 20% of all the regional pilots vs. 40% of the Envoy pilots in a year.)

I previously have stated here my crystal ball prediction:

Within 5 to 10 years there will be 1/4 of the regionals still around with 1/2 the total number of regional pilots.

A lot of 50 seaters will be parked, with fewer per day 76 seaters taking their place.

Some of the 76 seaters will be replaced by the 100-120 seaters (CS100 etc) flown by the majors. The majors may even take back some of the 76 seaters flying. Kind of real speculation on that.

Finally, I predict some civilian pilots will be hired directly by the majors, without working for the regionals nor the military, just like they used to in the 1950s-1960s.

When CFI find they can get hired directly at FO Group I (Using AA terminology) pay at the majors and the regionals start paying something close to that, there will be a lot aspiring pilots applying. (Economics 101 says when starting pay like burger flippers at McDonalds transitions to near 100K starting pay; pay commencerate with the professional occupation, lots of people will choose the career.) Pay for a cadet program of some sort may enter the picture for thousand of those aspiring pilots.

Check back in a decade to see the accuracy of my predictions.

I will now put my crystal ball away.

 

I think you’re underestimating the suck of all other carriers that will have to pay up as their pilots retire and/or get mwdicalled out or just have had enough.

Regionals will be on life support in about 2-3 years time. The fact that just about every regional is hiring street right now CA’s is telling and just the start of the house of cards.

 

I agree with you, basically what I said. That is why I said the majors will be hiring some amount of 23 year old CFI directly off the street at Group I rates (currently FO starting at $88/hour). The remaining regionals will have to double their current FO rates to something like that to stay in the game.

The number of pilots working for the regional airlines will greatly reduce. Regionals will consolidate or go out of business. (Island Air and Great Lakes are just the tip of the iceberg.) if you want my projection of who survives PM me.

The industry will finally get enough new hires when the pay goes up a large amount. If someone gets that much shortly after college, it will be a starting pay more than the average engineers, scientists, pharmacists, accountants, and lawyers. Only doctors will get paid more. Of course, a pilot’s view out the office window is more impressive, as well.

 

Problem is the they won’t be able to train them quick enough.

100 seaters will be the new 50-75 seaters, hopefully with regionals dying. It’s simple numbers, regional managers are only trying to keep costs down right now to keep their jobs. Pretty soon the inevitable will happen and we will be too expensive to justify all the extra infrastructure.

It might take 2-3 years to pan out but it’s going to happen. The fact we are bringing ****ty old 140’s out of the desert proves AA is simply being reactive and stalling because they’re waiting to see how the cookie crumbles which actually makes a modicum of business sense in the short term.

And it’s not only pilots, it’s license mechanics too.

 

TransWorlds mistake is looking at the contract with today’s glasses. The language was written YEARS ago. Different world back then. We were going to be shut down within 3 years back then and they needed us to swallow a **** contract with a flow cherry on top. My view TransWorld is you can **** already

 

My money is on TransWorld being either:

A. Envoy management
Or
B. Envoy recruiter