The big wage increases at the regionals were largely an artifact of the majors allowing early retires for their most senior pilots back when they anticipated a sustained industry wide recession. They basically took three years worth of retirements all at once. The surprisingly quick rebound of demand created a hiring surge at the majors that drained the regionals of their CAs and senior FOs. Soon the regionals were parking aircraft because they didn’t have enough CAs to fly them or enough FOs senior enough (and willing) to upgrade. And it wasn’t getting better, because their CAs were being hired by the majors (and their senior FOs by the ULCCs) faster than they could get their FOs who were willing to upgrade up to the 1000 hours making them eligible to upgrade. The only real solution was to hire DECs which required not just the money for the DECs but contract revisions to bring existing payscales up to the point that the CA’s were equal to the DECs and might actually stay around a few years while FO rates were brought up to where those who were near 1000 hours would actually stick around and actually become CAs who would hopefully fly sufficient hours as a CA to qualify their FOs to eventually upgrade.

That whole mess was sort of a COVID related disturbance in the market that is unlikely to be repeated any time soon. I doubt that regional payrates will actually be decreased, just allowed to drift down with pay increases of less than the inflation rate. Because yeah, with NK in bankruptcy and F9 not making much money, and the like, the market is starting to readjust toward historic norms.

 

it will go to 5 once the last of the pre-covid hires flow. It's 6 years right now for those flowing in the next annoucement. They were hired pre-covid and sat here for 1 year 3 months on property when there was no flow. Once the last of them flow, the covid gap will close and the next flows will be 5 years on property.