Green Needles

This!

Childs is a greedy idiot that just wants his supply of 250 wonders back that are willing to work for poverty wages. Keep the numbers where they are and make it worthwhile for people to achieve them.

SkipperBaloo

Indeed. Someone get him some cheese for that whine. I really hope his airline collapses after he and the rest if Inc have destroyed at least two perfectly good pilot groups. The pilots will be fine and they shouldn't go fly for Skywest, but instead fly for a Skywest competitor

LAX2MSP

I completely agree. Don't change the legal requirements to get low-balled on pay. If the requirements stay the same but people are actually enticed to come to a regional, people will come.

Sometimes that wont be enough for people to come to certain regionals though. Ask any prospective regional pilot what is important for them in choosing a regional and they will tell you "bases, equipment and pay." Some airlines will have 1 of those boxes checked, others 2 and maybe even 3. Pay is huge though because if you want someone who is from i.e the west coast to fly out of DTW or LGA, they better have some good incentive.

Jet Jockey 00

Majors hiring 18,000 pilots in the next 3 years? Don't think so maybe he meant next 5-10.

There is no pilot shortage. Mesa just hired 25 last month. Thousands of ATPs out there. They are working in different fields due to the lack of pay. The problem is the regional airlines and the majors having 40% of feed flown by them.

He is crying that he doesn't have the bottomless well of cheap pilots that the regionals once had.

Guaranteed govt. loans would only allow ATP and ERAU to raise prices like they do at colleges and having pilots paying off even higher loans. We have new hire pilots coming in that have debt that is the same as my brothers medical school loans. He has been paying them off for 10 years, how long will it take for a regional pilot to pay them off?

snackysmores

Brad Tilden saying he wants the American taxpayers to subsidize pilot training is hilarious.

We're talking about a CEO of a company that has $8b in the bank that refuses to pay it's regional pilots (Horizon) a starting wage over $27k a year. He has outright refused to negotiate for an industry standard pay package to bring in new pilots, and instead pays millions for union busting consultants and hundreds of thousands in "pre employment" bonuses for new Horizon pilots so they can side step the bargaining table.

A simple way to ease our staffing crisis is to offer higher premium pay for trips. We used to have 200% but they said they we were getting paid too much and dropped it to 150%. Now no one picks up premium pay, and both the Horizon CEO and Alaska CEO agree it's better to cancel a full 76 seat flight and spend $8-10k per flight re-accommodating passengers with hotels and tickets than pay the First Officer an extra SIXTY DOLLARS for 4 hours of work. During the month of december we had almost 20-30 cancellations a day for lack of first officers.

Taco280AI

Pay up, people will come if it is financially worth it. Know plenty of rotor wing pilots that would come over if it were worth it. But about the time our contracts is up is about the time the Army starts paying more, and is a big hit, even with bonuses, to go to a regional - for the first few years. So pay more $$$ and you'll get more people.

AZFlyer

That is the very definition of a shortage. It has nothing to do with scarcity.

Cefiro

Pretty simple, keep increasing pay and pilots will come. He's just upset that the days of paying a first year FO 25k/year are gone.

155mm

Whining to Congress won't get the Regional Airline industry anywhere! Those clowns in Congress can't even talk to each other let alone solve a real problem! The airline industry has become nothing more than a bus service. What kid wakes up in the morning saying gee, I want to be a bus driver? The luster has completely evaporated!

What's their solution? Have the young generation take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans? Brilliant, lets enslave these young bright kids for the rest of their natural lives! Perhaps they want to attract foreign pilots with H1 visa programs? Hello, there is a global shortage of pilots!!! The fact is, they are starting to get into a panic mode for one simple reason...management at the regional level, is going to have to find another line of work! Why? Because the majors will increase lift with larger airplanes and decrease frequency thus eliminating the regionals all together. They knew this whole thing was coming years ago but their short sightedness was due to simple greed!

jshoneycutt

1.5-hour flight, CA at $66, FO at $36, 2 FA at $21 = $216. Time 140% for taxes and benefits = $302.40. divide by 60 tickets = $5/ticket. I think there is plenty of room for salary increases.