How deep is the street captain well?

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05-26-2018, 07:42 AM

#11

Cyio

Gets Weekends Off

Joined APC: Mar 2017

Posts: 3,656

Quote:

Originally Posted by flyguy727

Many of us in the industry, come to the 121 for the title, "Airline Pilot" that title used to mean something, when people only saw the guys flying the big metal. Now, people know the reality of things, and basically can't understand why we would subject ourselves to such lifestyle, for such low pay. Things have gotten better, and will continue to get better up to a point. In the up coming years, there will be drastic change's in the industry, with some reginalds folding to due lack of pilots. Some 135 operators are now paying much better money, fly more interesting routes, so some people may chose to stay corporate. Some of us, like myself, will go fly boxes, opting not to go to the majors. If you go to the big 135s, swift, netjets and flexjet, you'll be flying new, equipment, high paying job, and better routes.

Good luck to all on your journey!

God Speed!

The idea is corporate life sounds amazing until I think about the issues of dealing with customers, longer periods away from home and the extremely long upgrade times.

The idea of flying to some cool places is the upside I guess. Good luck to all indeed

05-26-2018, 10:00 PM

#12

Varsity

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Joined APC: May 2017

Position: 175 CA

Posts: 1,285

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyio

The biggest problem is still pay. Large cabin biz jet drivers still take a huge paycut to go to the left seat at a regional. Even with a 5 figure 'bonus'.

The holiday inn express overnights in Des Moines and Joplin aren't appealing either.

05-27-2018, 04:05 AM

#13

Funk

Rodeo clown

Joined APC: Feb 2017

Position: Tractor seat

Posts: 703

Quote:

Originally Posted by Excargodog

Possible but unlikely. What does it cost to recruit and type-rate 500 pilots? Call it a $10K per hiring bonus, three months minimum pay during training, three months hotels, sims, cost of instructors, you gotta be looking at $15 million as an absolute minimum. So do you break that working group up, in hopes that you can put them through ANOTHER training in hopes that you can add a percentage of those to your existing pilot group as DECs?

You are likely to lose a lot of them, even if you take over the flying they were originally doing in the same equipment. Why would you do this - especially if you WERE flying the same equipment? Easier and cheaper to either force upgrades of your existing FOs who have the requisite 1000 hours or just buy and merge seniority lists. Yes, merging seniority lists always gets ugly, but the ugliness is handled by the unions and the negotiator under McCaskill-Bond, so little of the cr@p settles on management.

Of course, they could address the QOL issues of their junior captains that compell their FOs to put off upgrade until they can hold a base and a line. Perhaps through better scheduling requiring fewer people to be on reserve, especially in places no one much likes being on reserve, which would shorten duration for those doing that. Positive space and hotels woukd help too. All those would be expensive of course, but no more expensive than buying a regional just to break it up and hoping you'll get DECs from it.

That seems more a formula to give LCCs cheap FOs.

Buying a seniority list is far more costly and carries more risk to a company. Observe DAL’s move to cancel XJT contract: Frees up a bunch of ATL based CAs, bent on trying to stay in ATL, happy to fly the same equipment, and at a discounted pay rate over what they would cost as merger pilots.

9E scoops up a bunch of pilot’s that are low risk for completing training, can’t really push back on the new way of doing business like they would as merger guys, and at $84/hr as first year captains, they make back $15K in training costs over pay rates if they retained any seniority via merger (9 E makes back that money in the first year). Oh, and add in the savings of hiring and paying them as FOs, with the “we don’t have enough CAs right now, so you’ll be a CA on the first vacancy bid, but we can’t contractually offer you a CA seat until existing company FOs don’t qualify or pass on those seats. It’s a sure thing. The FO pay at $50/hr will be temporary.” Even if they bid and win a CA seat and immediately start CA raining at the end of indoc, by the time a lightning fast indoc and IOE is complete in 90 days (.25 years for math nerds), 9E has still saved $8K just in the difference between new CA pay and new FO pay. Additional savings come from adding these pilots as part of planned new hire classes rather than having to start paying them all at once, and you have lots of $$$ saves.

That’s just the heartless money side of things. Add self-adulating corporate culture talking points like:

1) “By taking some of these pilots in as new hires we can insure that they learn to do things the 9E way and seamlessly integrate into our system to protect mainline’s brand like only we can do.”
2) “We will be able to target only the best pilots, insuring we don’t inherit any problem children from brand X’s seniority list.”
3) “No need to worry about renegotiating our TA to potentially merge in details of brand X’s contract.”

Now, once you kill part of one regional and use your wholly owned to swallow up its flying, how much scarier are your threats towards other regionals when you want to get something out of them?

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05-27-2018, 05:13 AM

#14

JayBee

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Joined APC: Apr 2015

Posts: 608

Quote:

Originally Posted by flysooner9

Not about the ego but it’s about the paycheck. Many of the corporate guys coming back over are leaving good paying jobs and can’t afford to live on FO pay again. Has nothing to do with ego.

With the FO signing and retention bonus first year FO pay usually beats first year CA on reserve pay, depending on carrier which is why some companies have DEC bonuses

05-27-2018, 08:11 AM

#15

rogersmith

Line Holder

Joined APC: Feb 2012

Posts: 36

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayBee

I'm guessing they are hoping to poach from the Private/Charter/Corporate world where people's huge egos couldn't stomach being an FO

but yea you can only get so many cross regional transfers

I made the jump from charter to a regional as a street captain and took a pay cut north of $50k(and yes that’s including the signing bonus). The goal was getting some 121 pic time to look more attractive to the majors. I had over 1000 jet pic, a college degree, internal recommendations, and all the other requirements for the majors. It wasn’t an ego thing, I couldn’t afford being a regional fo (student loans and mortgage). So, I commuted across the country to get that 121 pic. Once I got off ioe and had one hour of 121 pic, I updated my apps. I got two interview offers that week and got hired at my choice major. I left that regional still on high mins.

Was it a terrifying few month, yes. Was I extremely lucky on how the timeline worked, yes. Was it 100% worth it, yes. Different strokes for different folks.

05-27-2018, 09:46 AM

#16

Irishblackbird

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Joined APC: Aug 2014

Posts: 444

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayBee

I'm guessing they are hoping to poach from the Private/Charter/Corporate world where people's huge egos couldn't stomach being an FO

but yea you can only get so many cross regional transfers

Hiring the part 91/135 guy does nothing to help the regional Capt shortage, may have multiple type rating's and jet pic, but have no 121 time. Unless they have previous 121 time it won't help. Has nothing to do with ego but everything to do with $$$! I got friends that make $140k a year flying light business jets. If there are corporate guys trying to make the crossover, many will try and go directly to a legacy if they have prior 121.