pilotpayne

Bingo. I just always look annoyed (naturally) so I never have those problems. But I absolutely sympathize with our customers.

IAFDOF

I got yelled at by more than one very, very angry passenger last week when the entire terminal was melting down… again. One dude was basically panhandling: “are you my pilot? You’d better be my pilot!!” You just can’t avoid it.

IPAsallday

Not sure how many people are paying attention to the regionals but as a past RJ scum myself. The pay and bonuses are skyrocketing. All I remember hearing is it’s impossible for them to pay more and yet somehow they are. Yes I understand the law of supplying and demand but it’s still amazing companies can find the money when they need it. Let’s remember this going into 2.0

BravoTango

Sure but don’t miss the big picture. Rising costs prevent one regional from undercutting another on their cost to the major. So it makes it safer to raise pay, which then will in large part eventually get passed on to the major so it’s not that simple.

What eventually happens is if this B pay scale gets too high it starts to make sense to bring the flying in house for the major. And the regional model slowly dies due to the lack of pilots both because the regionals can’t retain and the majors take it over because of high cost added to regional overhead. And LCCs start hiring at 1500 like Allegiant. And in ten years the industry looks very different.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

todd1200

I think that's a great point. But is the constrained supply of pilots a short-term or long-term phenomenon? I don't know what the numbers in the training pipeline look like, but it's possible that more and more young people that are evaluating career opportunities will see the improved compensation and decide to pursue flight training instead of computer science, mechanical engineering, etc. It will take a few years, but at a certain point, the career becomes attractive again and the labor supply issues could sort themselves out. There may or may not be a place for regional airlines in the new landscape, but I'd imagine most of them are just trying to keep the lights on until the dust settles.

Either way, the airlines created this problem by pushing the pay and work rules to a point that this career became so unattractive, so they'll have to figure out how to dig their way back out.

Bluedriver

You say all this as if it was a bad thing... It's not.

Boomer

Did I miss a contract survey somewhere? The only survey I remember taking was the “Why did LOA 13 bomb?” survey over a year ago, and that was clearly not an appropriate survey to determine our expectations for CBA 2.0.

Bluedriver

A thunderstorm goes through Florida and we lose all staffing control in the *peak* month of APRIL.

SaintNick

can’t wait till July!

MainlineFlyer

We lost control of the airline for at least 3 days. Seriously thinking about contacting the FAA, though I don't know exactly what I would say. If we had a real union they could be doing it as they probably have much more data points to present.