Can a regional run without long-term pilots
 

Thinking particularly of the AA wholly owned carriers that are continually sucking out their most senior people, but presumably this will apply to most carriers.

There is some current (dwindling) supply of lifers but can a regional sustain itself over a prolonged hiring wave when all the line check airmen are getting hired away and every FO has to upgrade the moment they hit 1000 hours?

Not sure what airline you're at, but at mine the check airmen do not get hired anytime they want. The majors are still extremely competitive. Most people seem to operate under the incorrect assumption that being a check airmen means you can get hired wherever.

I guess it depends how many people are learning to fly. At Piedmont we only lose 6 month to flow, so if they can't keep up with that attrition there are big issues. Which come to think of it seems like exactly the kind of situation Piedmont would find itself in. Is your company having trouble covering attrition?

We can hope not (and wish for everything to be absorbed into mainline), but wholly owned carriers have been in a growth stage for the last 3 years, hence the 1000 hour upgrades. This will continue for only so long and then the music will slow as they only need to move people for attrition. When it takes 5-6 years for a new hire to flow, 3-4 or those years will be spent as a captain, which should be enough time for them to mature to LCA/Sim Instructor/etc and the company recover their investment. The one position that seems more difficult to fill is APD, basically a DPE for the airline. That’s a very senior position, one that holds a lot of weight within the training department.

At my airline all the new check airmen seem to get scooped up within a year of getting the position. Most of the long term ones have either burned far too many bridges to get hired anywhere or have no desire to leave.

The check airmen at my airline seem to have some success as soon as they receive that designation. We had one LCA who was a direct entry captain on reserve for 2 years, and 2 months after he got the LCA letter he was hired by Delta. I know of another LCA who will be moving on to another major, and has only had his LCA for about 5 months. These are only 2 recent ones I have personal contact with, but know of many others who seem to move on as soon as they become LCA. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not. I think the LCA will help make a guy stand out more than the next guy.

Flow at the AA Wholly owned regionals are 9-10+ years for new hires. Regardless of how much their management cries wolf about needing more pilots to staff and withhold flows, they’re not in danger of running out of pilots anytime soon.

I definitely agree, you need any edge you can get and being a check airmen is a leadership position and shows that your company really believes in you. I was just saying that it helps, but isn’t as easy of a task to get hired at a major as a check airmen as some believe it to be

I didn’t mean to make this about lca’s. They’re just an example of something an airline needs that you cannot manufacture quickly.

Using psa as an example - half the pilot group was hired in the last two years. Many of the lifers are near retirement. What happens if in a year they have 40 pilots who have been there over 5 years. Does that work.

Not “asking for a friend” about psa. Just generally curious about what degree of senior pilot staffing a regional has to have.

Enough to stay on the FAA's good side, and enough to not bend metal. That's about it.

One of the most surprising things to me, transitioning from engineering to the airlines, is that pilots only need to be "adequate". There is no reward or recognition for holding a heading +/- one degree instead of the +/- ten degrees, for example.

The pilots who push, nonetheless, for +/- one degree are the ones I want to fly with. In my brief and junior experience, those are also the ones that attract attention from major airlines, LCA or not (mostly not).

YMMV, of course.

At Envoy, we have over 200 lifers. That's almost 10% of the airline. More than enough to make it run.

The real brain drain is in the training department. Our "professional" sim instructors suck. Most have never flown a jet before.

I worry about “lifers” more than FNGs.

I flew with a couple who were terrifying

I’d prefer the ones that keep up their instrument scan rather than letting their attention be distracted by micromanaging something that on a five nautical mile wide airway will move them one mile to the right or left of centerline over the next 100 miles.

Anybody who is obsessing on a 1 degree heading issue anywhere outside the FAF isn’t paying attention to more important things.

YMMV.

I'm with you on at least having a goal fo excellence rather than adequacy ... but pilots are kinda like 2*4's. They need to be like every other 2*4. They don't have to be twice as strong and half the weight.

Couldn't agree more. Thankfully most sim instructors are still actual pilots.

I think you miss my point. While someone who operates just inside the tolerances for whatever is certainly adequate and meets the standard, they aren't trying to improve their skills. And that's the point - someone who isn't trying to improve their professional skillset isn't worth hiring if there is someone who *is* constantly trying to improve available. It's not hard to tell the two apart in a 30 minute conversation, LCA or not.

Our line pilots in the training dept are super heroes. The PSI's are like black holes of misinformation. It's an atrocity.

I think you chose a poor example to make your point. Chasing parallax error or Brownian motion does not make you more precise or motivated, it just increases your task loading without benefit, which won’t hurt you usually if everything else is going OK.

Acquiring the skill and knowledge of how to most safely and efficiently manage an aircraft is indeed a laudable goal, but instantly correcting every one degree deviation does not contribute to that - not outside the FAF anyway. There are other places the mental effort to accomplish that degree of attention could and should be better spent.

Sigh. Sorry. Didn't realize I was dealing with Capt. Literal. :rolleyes:

My training feedback that I sent was pretty darn long. I'm glad I had quite a lot of experience in real life IFR flying, and I was paired with a CA upgrade. So we knew to call out the BS our PSI tried to feed us doing IPTs and one sim session.
"If you can't load the LDA from the FMS just load the ILS, it's the same thing".
Wish I was making that sh*t up.

The real line pilot instructors, just like you say, are amazing.

You are giving ME grief about an erroneous example that YOU chose? Sorry. I didn't realize I was dealing with Captain Fragile Ego.

:rolleyes:

While I agree that obsessing about a one degree error or 0.01 on the cross track while in cruise flight is a bit much. I literally have zero intention of antagonizing either person on either side here. But the underlying message is people who perform to the exact bare minimum and accept that as adequate.

I was in the military, and there’s an article called the “60% soldier”. Basically, soldiers are required to get 60 points on each of their three physical fitness assessment to pass. The “60% soldier” puts in the bare minimum to pass. They look at the charts and see exactly how many push-ups or sit-ups they have to do to pass instead of going all out and trying to obtain the highest possible score. The article goes on to say that the “60% soldier” will only defend your perimeter for 36 seconds of a 60 second attack. They will only hit 6 out of 10 incoming soldiers. They will only remember, or care about, 60% of their military job. What if they decide first aid is part of the 40% of knowledge they don’t need, and you get hit, and now they have to tend to you?

The point is, no one is perfect. As pilots, we should be striving for as close to perfection as we can, and we should continuously strive to improve and learn. Don’t be a 60% soldier.

So you're saying I need more pieces of flair?

Yes, that's what the majors are looking for. Either because it's a cultural fit for their operation, or because they believe (possibly backed by stats) that that type of pilot is safer.

I did notice a change from regional to legacy cockpit. Standardization and professionalism are much better. Very rarely is anyone blowing stuff off. If you're looking to move on, don't let your deviance get too normalized, they might pick up on that at the interview.

I’d rather have an average pilot flying than an average engineer designing...just saying.

I concure 100%. As a Marine we had the same types of folks in the unit...those who exercised the bare minimum to get by and fly under the radar. I’d rather fly with the guy who has OCD than the guy who throws up his arms and says, “It’s good enough for government work!” Those are the folks that slip through the cracks and fly on the edge of their knowledge, skills, and abilities. They probably should find a different profession, or helped along to a different profession.

Well at least at PSA the absolute most Senior FO you'll fly with as a Captain will be right about 2 years. That's about the maximum time you can avoid the forced Senior Upgrade.

So the times of having an experienced FO in the right seat to catch a new Captains mistakes are well and truly over.

I've been on property for 3 years and that puts me in the top third of the company which is nuts when you think about it. I make sure to tell all my FO's to absolutely speak up and we'll help keep each other out of trouble. I know other new Captains though who like to lord their four bars over the new guys, and they convince these FO's to just sit there and shut up.

Then again, when I was in the military we had idiots who would promote based on PT scores instead of job performance. Then they wonder why so many commanders are getting fired. "I am so shocked this PT stud fraternizes or runs an abusive unit!" But hey, at least they look crisp in a uniform.

That's kind of a hard requirement for a commander or leader, setting the example and all that.

If you want to be rumpled and unfit, military is the wrong line of work. Sorry.

Sure it is. Need that chiseled face right? Something that will scare the Ruskies? lol

I am not talking about promoting fat slobs, I am talking about differentiating between people who already passed the requirements for their PT tests. Time to rethink that strategy.



The above poster mentioned a study that states PT scores is what differentiated good leaders from bad. The military tried that for a while in the 00s and early to mid 10s, guess what? It is not working out too well. More commanders are being fired then ever, moral is lowest then it has been in decades, and people are leaving in droves.

You sound fat

Are you talking enlisted leaders?

Officers are not promoted or assigned to command based on pt, excerpt they have to pass. Exception for elite infantry for obvious reasons. Way more factors involved than that...

Typical response to those who have no counter argument to this issue. I regularly scored in the low 90s out of 100 on my PT tests.

The issue was on both sides and is geared more towards the mid and senior grades. The issue came into effect during the racking and stacking for DPs and # out of ## bullet statements.



I don't want to derail the whole thread on this issue. I just found it amusing that somebody posted that PT scores were an indication of a good leader.

In a military that ACCIDENTALLY loads and flies six nukes from Minot to Barkesdake hanging on the wing of an aircraft and leaves them unguarded on both ramps, I would say that PT scores are the least of their worries:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...30047820071019

At the USAFA cemetary they must call Curtis LeMay “old whirligig’.

That's exactly my point. For some reason the Air Force had this ultra focus on PT scores while the mission slipped elsewhere. I am by no means saying PT is not important, but those who have been in since the mid 00s know what I am talking about.

I actually never indicated that a good PT score was an indication of a good leader.

I know and experienced that.

I was simply paraphrasing the article for those who didn’t read it. My point was just to not accept the bare minimum effort. How many times have you heard people saying anything greater than a 70% on a written is “x% working too hard”? I know it’s a joke, but still. Would you want a 70% pilot on your next deadhead? He can only keep the needle 70% centered on an approach down to minimums? He only has 70% of his memory items and limitations down?

As one of my military instructors said, “attention to detail, kicks de-tail”. I still say that to this day, and get quite a few crazy looks when I do. My examples above are pedantic. But humor me. What margin of error becomes acceptable? For me, it’s honestly just an internal struggle of constsntly trying to improve, and never accepting less than what I believe is my best. I’m not perfect. I mess up. I don’t sweat 0.02 or 0.03 X track. I’m not going to fish tail myself all over the sky just trying to get 0.00. But I STRIVE to be as CLOSE to perfect as possible. For me, I just enjoy the challenge. I enjoy maintaining my skills and trying to improve upon them. And my personal opinion is that that’s what separates amateurs from true professionals. Our companies and passengers expect professionals. And I have to agree with the statement that people with that mentality, either consciously or subliminally, portray themselves as such, and interviewers at the next level can pick up on that. But I could still be young, naive, and bright eyed and bushy tailed, so 🤷🏻*♂️

Bwahahahahaa

I always said 70% was basically a D+.

I worked for a commander who prioritized PT and appearance for a very simple reason: It was easiest for him. He was not smart and he knew it.

Evaluating decision-making, technical skills, team-building and other critical aspects of leadership is hard. It takes work and actual analysis. Counting pushups and picking the starchiest fatigues or shiniest boots is easy.

It is comforting to know those leaders usually hit their ceiling, typically at the O4 level, when the need for actual thinking trumps the fascination with shiny things and buff bodies.

Then again, there are other fields for such individuals to advance. We’ve all worked for or seen the boss fixated on “always wearing a sharp suit” or the like. I wear a uniform and it always looks sharp; but I’ve found that leaders for whom that’s their main focus almost always lack needed critical basic leadership skills that are much more important than looks.