The ‘absorbs it’s regional group’ isn’t going to happen. The OVERWHELMING majority of hires at Delta are off the street. The candidate pool of ex military and OTHER THAN DELTA CONNECTION regional pilots is VASTLY bigger than Delta Connection and DALPA (who would have to buy in) feels no special affinity for Delta CONNECTION pilots. They would rather have the company buy 220s and for them to take the flying back, it’s been their goal since bankruptcy forced concessions.

And anyway, the numbers don’t work out. Endeavor is what? 2000 pilots? Even if everything worked optimally and there was no attrition at all to other carriers (and that ain’t going to happen) the maximum theoretical throughout is only about 500 pilots a year, averaging maybe 500 hours of flying per year with an immediate upgrade. You are STILL limited by the 1000 hour to upgrade rule and you are still going to have to have CAs stick around long enough to allow their replacements to get 1000 hours.

Delta CAN’T survive driving all the other candidates to their competitors while they can survive upgrading the 717s with A220s and absorbing the feed internally.

 

uhh, all that not hiring delta connection is by design, everyone is poaching everyone else’s regionals. So it really doesn’t matter in the aggregate. It comes down to how many pilots do you need for your hub and spoke. If the 2k that are their regional feed is the number, I know it’s not, then that’s what they need to do if the regionals themselves can’t keep up staffing. Bring it in house, get your seniority number, and now instead of the junior people flying the airbus or Boeing they’re flying the crj/erj. It’s really not that far of a leap of logic.

The people being hired with no 121 time will still have to get their 1000 to upgrade and there’s no question of whether or not you’ll have captains to do it. You’ll have the first captain pay scale getting less than a wb FO, but people will bid it because their qol and pay will still be better than where they’re at. Not to mention some people just need that 4th stripe to feel validated. Just my opinion.

 

A legacy bringing RJ flying in house doesn’t necessarily mean that the current pilots go with the deal. Couldn’t they just transfer the aircraft that they own to the legacy side and hire off the street to staff them? If the various regionals fail to staff their contractual obligations, I’d imagine that those contracts would be easy to void and the transfer wouldn’t be that difficult.

 

I suspect that’s how it would go with preferential interviews to union pilots when the airline shutters. Just speculation.

 

We’re not going to able to keep up with hiring and training pilots as is. That’s a pipe dream to think we’re going to hire and train RJ pilots to fly RJ’s, all done in house. Just to have those instructors and simulators would take years.

We’d be more likely to buy out someone than to start bringing RJ’s in house, but buying out a SkyWest or Republic seems very unlikely as well.

 

No, it’s not speculation, it’s your wishful thinking. Keep dreaming.

 

I definitely don’t see a legacy flying RJ’s any time soon. I was just pointing out that if they ever did, the pilots don’t necessarily transfer with the deal.

 

I’m not concerned. I’ve got my road map that has me good. Don’t need wishful thinking.

 

Delta has 220s and up until 2020 American had 190s

 

Neither of which is within scope for a regional, except for Horizon/Alaska which actually has no scope restrictions.