CFI Bros seething that rotor pilots that went thru significantly harder training in every way possible get preferential treatment

RW training/flying is harder. Anyone who can do RW can likely succeed in FW, more so than vice versa.

But it's also different. RW people need enough FW experience so that some things become second nature (speed and landings for example). If you try to rush it, it doesn't go well, as some regionals have discovered. Just because it's legal, doesn't mean it's smart.

The average green beret is far and away better at hands-on operations in dynamic situations than average slacker RJ FO. But that doesn't a SOF operator has any business landing a jet... unless he gets trained to do so.

I only came out of the woodwork to the regionals because the pay increased as it did.

If regionals increased wages another $20-30K, then (I think) you'd have even more second career folks stepping up to the line.

Thus, I don't believe in a pilot shortage. I do believe in a small shortage of pilots willing to make what we're paid now.

Exactly. There is no true pilot shortage, just a shortage of pilots still willing to work for literally poverty wages. The companies that recognized this change and raised the pay are not experiencing any pilot shortage.

The companies that shut down due to a lack of pilots refused to adapt and refused to raise pilot pay appropriately.

For a very long time, people grew accustomed to poverty pilot wages, due to a surplus of willing pilots. Long term poverty wages led to an apparent shortage in some companies. In my opinion, there is neither a pilot surplus nor a shortage currently. It’s more balanced today than the past several decades.

Plus with OK starting wages today, many more people are completing flight training with a goal of entering the pilot career. I don’t see any pilot shortage in foreseeable future.

Some companies had actually evolved into a business model which depended on low pay. Lakes went OOB not because they refused to pay pilots but because their business model simply would not support the crew compensation you now see at the regionals. Lot less revenue on 1900, at some price point those folks will just drive to the nearest town with RJ service.

There are a bunch of 135 PIC jobs that pay better and have much better QOL than at a regional.
The only reason to work for a regional is the hope that it makes you a better candidate for a major/LCC.

I don't agree with dera much, but this is 100% correct.

Well there's also lifestyle flexibility. On average 135 pilots will have less flexible schedules and will have to live in base. If you find the right one in your home town, great.

Depends on your definition of QOL. Being someone’s whipping boy was not for me. If my airline wants me to come in on my day off I have 0 fear about saying no. If I don’t believe it’s safe to go, I have 0 fear about saying no.

I don’t have to go to six liquor stores to find diet cherry vanilla caffeine free Mexican Coke Zero for my super special client after flying a six leg day. I don’t have to wash out a plastic bucket with a hose in the woods after Sir Reginald’s caviar doesn’t agree with him.

I bid my schedule (which had given me Christmas and thanksgiving off the past two years!), fly the plane, help passengers when I can (of my own free will!) and go home. I can live wherever I want, and if I can’t make it to work due to issues outside my control I don’t get punished for it. I have an active safety program and can ASAP events without fear of reprisal. And I hit six figures.

At my 135 I worked Monday-Thursday, home every night, and made just over 100k. No flying on weekends or holidays, 6 paid sick leave days a year (with absolutely no repercussions if I used all of them).
There is not a single regional, anywhere, where you can have QOL like that.
We had CASS, zed benefits, ASAP, and all the other usual suspects.

There are great 135 companies there. They are not all crappy Caravan SIC jobs where you clean toilet bowls with your bare hands while loading a 400lbs elephant in the cargo compartment to get it overweight and out of W&B in a snowstorm.