Principles: LCC vs Legacy
 

In the age of social media and with the recent customer service debacles lately, do you think companies like Jetblue and Southwest, which offer a consistent high value product, are in a better position to succeed than legacies that use lower quality aircraft and poorly paid subcontractors?

Do you think it's better in principle, as a pilot, to go for the money and work for a company that pays slightly higher airbus rates, but then pays regional contractors 50% of the appropriate wage to operate half of their flights? Or.. is it better to work for a company that pays less than the legacy but does not contract out any of their flying?

Yes, I like money just like everybody else. I'm just curious if anyone actually thinks about the whole picture before they decide that the big money legacies are the best thing out there right now for the profession.

Roll the dice, I hope it works out for you.

Every airline has and will have customer service issues like we've seen lately. No point in trying to over analyze it. IMHO, it's more important how the airline handles their issues. That's more valuable and a big window through which to view their future success.

Some want QOL. Some want money. You decide for yourself is my suggestion. Retirement and wages at majors and LCC's are on the rise to compete with legacies. It wouldn't be a bad option. You obviously won't make as much and won't have all those benefits but it's still competitive in my eyes.

The answer to your question is no.

You have a rather large comprehension gap regarding the businsses models of various types of airlines.

The legacies do hub and spoke, which is the only effective way to link small towns into their network, especially overseas.

LCC's typically have a different model:

SWA focuses on city-to-city, but only serves cities which are large enough to support several NB flights each day.

Jetblue (and Virgin) tend to do high-yield coast-to-coast flights, or link other lucrative markets.

Allegiant connects small/medium towns to vacation destinations.

Etc, etc.

The subcontractor thing for the regionals which feed legacies has a purpose. The FO pay at majors has to be more than junior military pilots make, or they would only come to the majors after they retire and get their pension. But if regionals paid mainline wages the entire regional feed system would operate at a loss, and would exist only to the extent that it brings feed to the hubs. Many, many small towns would lose air service. Does the system get abused? Yes. Lowest bidder is a bad idea, you get bottom feeders which skirt some of the fundamentals of safety, and you end up hiring anybody who meets FAA mins when pilot demand is high.

The legacies are not going anywhere, and the only thing which will kill the regionals is lack of cheap new-hires. If the pax really want good customer service they are probably going to have to stopping "sorting by price" when they buy tickets on orbitz. If they "sorted by quality", the market would respond.

I admittedly prefer the corporate culture of some airlines to others. But that's a personal call. Somebody asked one the UAL pilots in mil unit if he was embarrassed to be seen driving to work in uniform lately...he said "nah my maserati has tinted windows"

At the end of the day, when your retirement day rolls along, you'll be able to more precisely answer your question. My take on it, until then, try to get on somewhere that will jive better with who you are and what you believe in. Boat loads of money is great, but what's it really worth if you hate your job and who you do it for?

Well... A big thank you to everyone else who actually understood the point of the question, and answered it without trying to insult my intelligence. I'm pleasantly surprised by the maturity of most of the answers here.

This was mostly meant to provoke some thought about future airline success and the thought process behind choosing a job, not to directly compare the legacies against the smaller major carriers' operations and their markets...

The point being the legacies are not going to fail or decline because they don't offer the best customer service. Their business model is different from their LCC competitors. I didn't say you were stupid, and I'm sorry if it came off that way. I said you were comparing apples to oranges. Kind of like comparing greyhound to uberblack....uber's a nicer ride but not a practical solution for most folks from Miami to Minot, ND.

You may be oversimplifying your principles. Southwest contracts out heavy mx to the islands were fewer workers have A&Ps or speak English, they're just "supervised" by an A&P and work for less.
We have all heard about NAI, but plenty of trades are contractors now instead of company men. Every power plant, oil refinery, or chemical plant has far more contractors than company folks working in them.
The story is always the same, either know someone, or work as a contractor until you get chosen to be a company man.

That's good info but you might be over-complicating this. Unless the outsourcing of some mx directly affects the pilots and their pay/jobs?