1. Get rid of PIC requirement for Mainline job. Replace with 5 year 121 experience. After 5 years, you are more than qualified to sling gear at the majors. This will solve all the problems of racing to the bottom to get that coveted PIC time. How many guys take crappy jobs with low pay, terrible work rules, sadistic management, and etc., just to get PIC? Who would take a job at a bottom feeder if all they need is years and not PIC?

2. Mainline guys stop giving up SCOPE to save pay, jobs or to get a shiny jet. The regional jet should have been mainline flying. Any plane that can leave the "region" should have been mainline. The jobs would have come back, the pay would be better than it is now, and the company is going to get the jet anyway. How many DC-3's are still flying?

3. Be willing to sacrifice. Do not pick up OT when staffing is low, or worse, guys on the street. Do not sell out your junior guys! Yes, you have been there, done that, but that doesn't mean it is someone else's turn to eat the sh.t sandwich. Ten years ago the senior guys sold SCOPE to save their A$$es and now it is the very thing that is killing the profession.

I'm sure you can all add something, but these are the three things that I see need to be addressed.

 

Maybe 5 years 121 (or military) AND 1,000 hours????

 

Why would you exclude thousands of corporate, charter, and fractional pilots, most of which have PIC experience, from working for a major airline simply because they went 91/135 and not 121?

 

What we need is all regionals become part of the mainline carrier.
There is no reason why Jeff Skiles isn't mentoring new pilots at the regional level. He would actually get a pay raise if he went to one of the wholly owned and got to keep his seniority.
Then we would have high time experienced pilots coaching new regional pilots. Then when a regional F/O gets 5 year etc.... they can bid for the larger airplanes at mainline. Stay an F/O for 10 years plus then move to Captain on a regional jet. Then finally Captain at mainline.
It would solve the regional safety issue of having green captains with very green F/O's.
If you look at the pay rates most Mainline F/O's would get a pay raise if they went to their regionals and sat Captain.

If congress was truly set on improving safety then they would use the experienced pilots at the regional level.

 

I'm no pro yet, but dare I say the OP makes sense? It'll never work for that very reason, unfortunately but it does make sense. I'd also add the mandatory ATP for ALL airline pilots.

 

Sling gear...yes.

But should your first 121 PIC experience come when you are sitting left seat for a mainline heavy? Experience in the left seat at a regional is an important experience.

 

I understand your point, but couldn't disagree more on the value of PIC time. I sincerely hope most FO's at a major airline are not simply sitting in the right seat as "gear-slingers". Captain's authority has been erooded enough, there's no need to further degrade the importance of command.

 

A lot of guys do and its the wise thing to do, hate to say it. And you are exactly right to say that contributes to the overall issue of having low ball regional carriers because they know they can startup and find cheap labor thirsting for the PIC experience to get a better job.

I like this idea a lot. Promoting to legacy airline recruiters that hey don't count out the AE or Comair or ASA or Coex guy with 5 years as an FO because upgrade times were sky high. The only issue of course is PIC is preferred, and understandably so, and next time carriers start hiring they'll have a lot of PIC time pilots to select from and then if things get short they can go to low time PIC guys and then after that the SIC guys, which by that time would be PIC. Its self correcting.

But I don't discount that this is a good idea.

And as someone else said, 5 years Part 121 OR military.

A lot of us, A LOT, are working on it.

Valid point about open time pickup, especially when pilots are furloughed or furloughs are pending.

 

In most cases this only applies to first year F/O pay at mainline. After that the hourly rate quickly raises to above the average regional CPT pay (around 5 yrs.)
All these ideas are meant to create an ideal pilot working system. But we fail to address one simple idea, cheap labor. Management teams have worked tirelessly to find ways around their current labor contracts. The solution came in the form on contracting out work to other companies. Until the legal system rebalances to represent both parties equally, the unions will be powerless to stop the work loss.

 

If Congress was truly set on improving safety they would very simply outlaw the subcontracting of any passenger flying by a FAR 121 Carrier. The carriers would be required to do their own flying with people on their certificate, or buy/integrate their express "partners" onto it.