Regionals being wiped out with major hiring?
 

So my company came out with an article saying the majors will be hiring 10k pilots next year. 8k will come from regionals.

by my napkin math there’s about 16k regional pilots out there. Could this 2022 hiring spree by majors wipe out half of the regionals?

seems pretty crazy to me. How will this look? My regional is expected to lose about half our pilots next year (300/800). And we can only hire and train 5% of our group per month (40/800).

what will this look like in a year?

A few threads about this already, but the regionals will be decimated. The smaller ones won't exist anymore because the big ones will give huge bonuses to attract the few that remain.

The real problem is captains. The majors will be taking the captains at a much higher rate than FOs. Even if there were 16,000 regional pilots that were qualified for the majors, 1/2 of them are captains and will be gone in a year.

I said it before and I will say it again - if you are a captain at a regional today, you should be able to be at a major airline within the next 14 months. If you are a regional FO, get as many hours as you can and make sure your apps are in and update them weekly. You will be at a major very soon.

Could happen. If push comes to shoves, majors will prioritize manning mainline over regionals.

Likely result would be regional consolidation, since many cannot shrink and still have enough economy of scale to make it work. Mainline can get out of contracts at will when regionals fail to perform.

A massive buyout of SkyWest and/or Republic would be a “checkmate” move. Capture the pilots, aircrafts, simulators, training department who knows how to turn CFI’s into 121 pilots. Oh, they’ll have to pay for that move (no more regional pay scale gap?), and they’ll take on more risk, but desperate times will require desperate measures. That’s if the hype you all are claiming on the shortage becomes a real thing.

I remember sitting in my Aviation class, first day of college back in the Fall of 2011 hearing our professors push the shortage hype, “oh it’s coming”, 10 years later “it’s coming”, well we’ll see.

I’d be thrilled to see my seniority number jump 10-25% with a massive regional buyout by UAL, it would also give me confidence with job security. But I’m still skeptical on the hype.

the shortage was here in the late 2010s and is back again. You can see this in pay rates and bonus offerings. It absolutely happened and is happening.

https://i.ibb.co/71r0wJn/D02-CC5-E3-...22-C6-F521.jpg

https://www.realclearpolitics.com

Or, we could be heading for another lost decade with $200 oil, a depressed economy, and the bottom third of the major seniority lists furloughed. It’s a cyclical business and recession and stagflation has happened before. That’s life. You pay your money and take your chances…

It is crazy and it’s going to look crazy. The problem is that an operationally independent 121 carrier needs captains and line check airmen. If those a grown from within, they need a good contingent of people with 4+ years experience. Doesn’t matter how many FO’s you hire, lose half your captains and it’s game over.

the 50 seat carriers will go first. Air whiskey is my bet, as both PSA and the rest of the world lures their pilots. Probably will start seeing “$50 per 121 hour logged” type signing bonuses

A really devious major move would be to buy a couple small regionals and just shut them down to flood the market temporarily, but it could happen organically as well

Yup, and I’d be the first furloughed and last called back at a company with a management department that seems to love the idea of being on the heavy side of risk, which doesn’t bold well in an economy “pullback”.

Meanwhile, APC commentators are already convinced they’ll be hiring like crazy for the next decade.

The big three, UPS, and FDX could shrink and still need to hire due to retirements.

They are also afraid of not having the sim capacity to handle a future demand surge coinciding with known retirements so they may even be "investing" in pilots to avoid getting caught later, even if they have some uncertainty.

I work at the same regional as Erjpilot90. Our company has cut the schedule by 15-20% to accommodate more hiring and training. The result? Crappy, low-credit trips with lots of long airport sits and time-wasting deadheads. At least I'm in the turboprop, which has a minimum guarantee of 4.2 credit hours a day.

I am very optimistic about the future for those that are just starting their flying careers. My own 37-year career has been full of both triumphs and disappointments. I've seen numerous recessions, several pandemics (not just Covid), furloughs, airline consolidation, 9/11, and the change in the retirement age from 60 to 65 - all of which impacted my job. People starting their airline careers now should be prepared for the occasional career setback and have a positive attitude about it. No matter how bad things get, there's always something you can be doing to improve your qualifications and position yourself for a better job.

The most important advice I can give a newbie? No matter how much you like flying, it's still a JOB - a way to pay the rent and put food on the table.