Ch-ch-ch-changes....
05-18-2018, 08:32 AM
#1
Perennial Reserve
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Jan 2018
Posts: 11,503
Ch-ch-ch-changes....
The regional world is starting to undergo a time of huge changes and the most vulnerable - it would seem to me - might be the so-called 'lifers,' the guys who for whatever reason made their peace with the fact that the peak of their flying career would be to become a regional captain.
They may have never honestly believed they could go higher. Perhaps they just never got the college degree that most majors were demanding as a bullet item on your resume twenty years ago, perhaps they had black marks on that resume, training failures or DUIs that their regionals would overlook but the majors wouldn't, perhaps it was nothing but unfortunate timing that at a time in their life when they were more mobile, the economy was in the toilet and there were vast legions of furloughed pilots standing between them and any job at the major.
So for whatever reason,they made their peace with it. They hung on, gradually climbed the regional ladder as their seniors retired while their peers either gave up the profession or some - the lucky ones - moved on.
So now they are senior captains in the domicile they want to be in, long established with roots in the community, making decent money - just north of $100K ain't major airline captain pay, hell it ain't even major FO pay after the first year or so, but it's seriously more than the median income and the 401k is starting to look fairly decent. And let's face it, you are now kind of tied to the community and reasonably comfortable in the lifestyle. The kids are settled down in the area and starting to have kids of their own. Moreover, you've only got about ten years left in this business. Do you really want to take a pay cut for a couple of those years (even if it makes sense in the long run) then either commute (which you haven't done in twenty-five years) to reserve (which you haven't done in 23 years) or move to a new base leaving those kids and present and future grandkids behind? To sit in the right seat?
Heck, even if your regional is wholly owned and you get flow, so those old DUIs or training failures or no four year degree isn't even an issue, do you take it? Do you spend the last decade of your flying career taking the crap schedule in the right seat when what you are doing right now - well, you've become pretty damn comfortable there? And what happens if there is a recession? Do you go from a bulletproof seniority number at your regional to a furlough-bait number at a major?
There are thousands of stories out there, hundreds of issues that will affect what happens in career progression in the years to come. It won't be pure queuing theory and it won't be linear either. It will be the sum total of thousands of people with different life stories making their own decisions based upon dozens of variables, many of them unique to that one individual.
These are interesting times, in the Chinese proverb sense of the word.
They may have never honestly believed they could go higher. Perhaps they just never got the college degree that most majors were demanding as a bullet item on your resume twenty years ago, perhaps they had black marks on that resume, training failures or DUIs that their regionals would overlook but the majors wouldn't, perhaps it was nothing but unfortunate timing that at a time in their life when they were more mobile, the economy was in the toilet and there were vast legions of furloughed pilots standing between them and any job at the major.
So for whatever reason,they made their peace with it. They hung on, gradually climbed the regional ladder as their seniors retired while their peers either gave up the profession or some - the lucky ones - moved on.
So now they are senior captains in the domicile they want to be in, long established with roots in the community, making decent money - just north of $100K ain't major airline captain pay, hell it ain't even major FO pay after the first year or so, but it's seriously more than the median income and the 401k is starting to look fairly decent. And let's face it, you are now kind of tied to the community and reasonably comfortable in the lifestyle. The kids are settled down in the area and starting to have kids of their own. Moreover, you've only got about ten years left in this business. Do you really want to take a pay cut for a couple of those years (even if it makes sense in the long run) then either commute (which you haven't done in twenty-five years) to reserve (which you haven't done in 23 years) or move to a new base leaving those kids and present and future grandkids behind? To sit in the right seat?
Heck, even if your regional is wholly owned and you get flow, so those old DUIs or training failures or no four year degree isn't even an issue, do you take it? Do you spend the last decade of your flying career taking the crap schedule in the right seat when what you are doing right now - well, you've become pretty damn comfortable there? And what happens if there is a recession? Do you go from a bulletproof seniority number at your regional to a furlough-bait number at a major?
There are thousands of stories out there, hundreds of issues that will affect what happens in career progression in the years to come. It won't be pure queuing theory and it won't be linear either. It will be the sum total of thousands of people with different life stories making their own decisions based upon dozens of variables, many of them unique to that one individual.
These are interesting times, in the Chinese proverb sense of the word.
05-19-2018, 03:34 PM
#3
Perennial Reserve
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Jan 2018
Posts: 11,503
Originally Posted by sflpilot
There is a group of people at the regionals that mainline will probably never take. And to make matters worse the regionals are now peppering their ranks with new hires of questionable abilities.
05-21-2018, 12:52 PM
#4
Seat 0B
Joined APC: Dec 2007
Position: 777 FO
Posts: 791
Originally Posted by sflpilot
There is a group of people at the regionals that mainline will probably never take. And to make matters worse the regionals are now peppering their ranks with new hires of questionable abilities.
05-28-2018, 08:30 AM
#5
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Mar 2005
Posts: 1,888
I think much of the issue may not be that they are undesirable, but that the longer you have been in this industry the more stuff you have to put in your app and the greater the chance of messing something up in the app now that everything is done by algorithms. Oh crap, that high school summer job you took 25 years ago makes your app look like you have a period of unemployment that’s not accounted for. Red flag. You have a three week gap between military assignments when you took a bunch of leave? Oops, another employment gap.
Also, greater chance of having real “red flags” in your app. A 25 year old with 6 moving violations? Questionable. A 48 year old with 6 moving violations? Yawn.
A 25 year old with less than a 3.0? May have issues studying. The 48 year old with less than a 3.0 who worked multiple jobs while serving in the Guard during college, no check ride failures and multiple type ratings and 25 years in the industry? The GPA is almost meaningless, except to the app scoring software.
Also, greater chance of having real “red flags” in your app. A 25 year old with 6 moving violations? Questionable. A 48 year old with 6 moving violations? Yawn.
A 25 year old with less than a 3.0? May have issues studying. The 48 year old with less than a 3.0 who worked multiple jobs while serving in the Guard during college, no check ride failures and multiple type ratings and 25 years in the industry? The GPA is almost meaningless, except to the app scoring software.
05-28-2018, 08:38 AM
#6
China Visa Applicant
Joined APC: Oct 2006
Position: Midfield downwind
Posts: 1,919
Originally Posted by JetDoc
Which begs the question, why not?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
"Begs the question" is not an analog to "which leads me to wonder..."
