I think we will see a lot more "flow through" agreements with non-wholly owned carriers going to legacy airlines, but those agreements will be weak and won't turn out as hoped by the express pilots. This will allow legacies to poach LCCs while keeping their express pilots from jumping ship (I'm gonna wait here, I'll flow through to mainline!).

B6 management is helpless; helpless I say! How evil of those other airlines to offer greater pay and benefits.

I'm new to this industry - what did the regionals used to be?

Independent carriers flying under their own brand name focusing on short haul flying in one region of the country. They did have some codeshare flying with mainline carriers, but it wasn't always the only source of revenue like it is today. None of this generic branding and route maps that look like a mainline carrier. It would do a lot of good for the regional industry to return to this model (from a pilot's point of view) for the sake of better onboard product, and employee benefits/pay.

There will never be a pilot shortage. The way of recruiting though might have to undergo a transformation. For years the typical model for an airline pilot was a two track system. Either you went to the military or you got your ratings started flight instructing and then moved up to a regional carrier. This system will most likely not work in the future. The Europeans for decades have had a Cadet pilot system in place. This is now becoming the normal mode of pilot recruiting in Asia and the Middle East. At my current airline in Asia the new Cadet pilots are recruited after college if the can pass the medical. Not easy as it is a 50% failure rate. Those successful applicants are then sent to the states for 1 year to go from zero hours to fully rated ME pilots and 250 hours TT. They then proceed back to Asia and do 3 months of intensive ground school and simulator training. The next step is 3 months of jumpseating and observation flights. They then begin their actual B-737 NG flight training and FO checkout. After 4 years they upgrade to Captain. There is not nor will there ever be a pilot shortage. The model is changing and the US carriers may have to adapt to a cadet pilot system as the rest of the world is now utilizing.

Where they are taught what buttons to push and when. God forbid if they have to do a visual approach like say SFO?

Spot on!!!

Something's fishy. What's up with the windows?

While this may indeed happen here in the U.S. at some point in the future, remember that our government works at a crawl. After all, how long did it take them to implement "corrective" action for Colgan 3407? About 5 years.

With the new 1500 ATP rule and 117, expect that to be the norm with airline execs on their knees in hearings "testifying" that they can't staff their regional feed. To keep the stock price inflated and only seeing down the road as far as the end of the current quarter, they won't have much of an idea or plan on what to do when pilots are no longer available for their regional cockpits. It is true that the majors won't have any trouble.

It's just that when this starts, expect several years until something happens like a cadet program. During this period, pilots should gain serious leverage.

I noticed that, too. Large metallic stickers to cover the plexiglass?