OpMidClimax

Contact flying...... you are prohibited from flying commercial outside of piedmont when you join. Contact flying?? Many of our new hires are rtp with no types, or cfi with no types. Not much contact flying out the other than cfi or sky dive for these low time people. Some people can get approval to work while you are in training, but if you have an incident or accident, yippy have just put your long career in jeopardy. While you are in training u are expected to keep training aware of any travel and be able to report to class or sim in short notice.

I would love that time off but it's not that simple.

havick206

Actually there’s lots of lucrative helicopter contract work for RTP types, particularly over summer.

flysooner9

Plenty of people from my class did a lot of traveling myself included.

2xPW123

The domiciles, hourly rates, and bonuses do bring people to a regional airline, because those things are simple and easily compared. Most of these guys coming in don't know what they don't know.

Recruiting will pick up again if all they do is raise our rates to PSA rates and the company allows recruiting to continue misleading people about the flow. It's unfortunate, but it's true.

Getting honest and complete information into the hands of applicants (not just PDT applicants, but all pilots who are shopping for regionals) would go a long way towards pilot labor moving in the direction of those airlines with better compensation, QoL, and opportunity.

I don't consider myself an enemy of the company. I would like the pilot group and the company to be successful both independently and together, but that's just not the case right now. Our pilot group is so far behind what should be considered acceptable. As long as the applicants are kept in the dark about that, but the pay rates appear good, they'll come.

60av8tor

I agree with the $$ bringing some people; you’re right. I still don’t think it’ll be enough alone to overcome all the other negative aspects and that’s probably a good thing. I guess the part that I find a bit shocking is that anyone comes here based off of recruiter promises. These aren’t 18yo’s in the hills of WV latched on to the words of a military recruiter with the only other option being Burger King. This place, surprisingly, works for some - as minimally as it may be. I want our QOL to improve for all on property and, more importantly, those that will join in the future. But to not do your due diligence in today’s day and age with all the info available... So if money alone does bring large #s again, so be it. I just don’t think that will be the case.

Flyinguy

Let’s hope the company learned their lesson on this one. The lesson that screwed them ever harder than getting no new recruits. The 50 or so that joined, went through some if not all of training, vacationing on company dime, seeing what it is actually like, and then bolting. This cost them way more than if no recruits showed up, this waste training time and company money to pay them.

They can no longer just make it lucrative enough to “get people in the door”. They need to make it tolerable for people to stay. Sure the top 350 or so is staying, but the 350 on the bottom end need to see something before mass exodus’s happen.

Like the poster above said, MK and co will be SOL if those 350 start leaving in mass. You can’t fly, and obviously suck at managing an airline (post 2015)....good luck with that resume.

AZFlyer

When the pay raise that was implemented in October 2016 occurred, we went from around 6 new hires per class to around 20 new hires per class. Nothing else at all about our qol had to be improved for that to happen. The same thing will happen again. Anyone that thinks that a big fat pay raise by itself with no other improvements won't fill classes again is fooling themselves.



Without further qol improvements, retention will still be an issue, but not recruiting. As has been mentioned already, industry newbies don't know what they don't know. Money talks.

Flyinguy

But in 2016-2017 when people joined in mass, there was a true 5ish year flow slowing to 7 years on the end. Now, there is a 10+ year flow (725/6/12). So like it did early this year, it got clueless people in class. Then they slowly figured out the lies, wasted time in training, got paid, then 2-3 months of new hires left.

The 2016 recruiting effort had a fairly legit 5 year flow. They don’t have that now. They need serious flow increase to match the obviously needed pay increase, or better QOL increases to go with the pay increase.

Or all that this pay increase will do, is cost them more, when the class seats are filled, the sims are booked, and those 40 leave again for greener pastures after having wasted more training time and company pay.

Flyinguy

Note sure why double posted, mods can delete.

AZFlyer

Right. People will always show up for pay rates. Retention will be the problem.