…there are implications for pilot commuters as well. Fewer regional flying trips mean earlier commutes, fewer easily commutable trips, more time in crash-pads or hotels. And that’s true even for major airline pilots if they don’t live near a major hub. As frequency goes down, commuting gets even less efficient from the small and medium sized towns, single leg commutes now becoming two leg commutes even if service is maintained. And even harder for those who have been living in cities where service is being dropped altogether.


https://bestlifeonline.com/delta-uni...y-cities-news/

 

Small town commuters have been taking hits for about the last decade, not getting better anytime soon.

 

The simple fact is that new pilots may have to (gasp!) work for a Part 135 outfit instead of going right to a Regional. Get your 500 hours of PIC in which will put you within 500 hours of Part 121 upgrade mins, get hired by a regional and upgrade under a year. Then get snatched up by a Legacy or whoever your forever airline will be. It may take you a little longer to get to a Regional but your time to your forever airline will be much shorter than even a few years ago.

So now instead of going to a Regional, getting 1000 hours and taking the first available upgrade. Then getting 1000 TPIC before becoming competitive to move on which would take a total of 4 to 6 years from Regional hire date, you'll have to do the above process which will take 3 to 5 years.

In other-words even though the process may be more convoluted, with this hiring market you will most likely get to your final destination of choice sooner than the historical average.

 

Or just go direct from your 135 outfit to the right seat at a major. Easy peasy.

 

Yeah 500tpic and unrestricted atp is not gonna be regional bait in 2024

 

What do you mean by that?

 

As someone who’s about to do this myself, the only thing I’m worried about is that none of the time for single pilot 135 ops counts under 121.436. So, it’s turbine, it’s multi, it’s PIC, but it isn’t countable towards 121 PIC. That said, I sure wouldn’t be complaining to end up at NK or the like, so I’m hoping an unrestricted opens that door in a year or more.

FWIW - 1300 TT, zero checkride failures, a decent resume, and the only place I ever got a reply from was Air Whisky. These days, you can make more money than ZW going 135, so that’s where I’m going.

 

I mean that

1) you pretty much need an unrestricted atp to get hired at sells-its-own-tickets 121 operation
2) regionals are not hiring fo’s
3) someone with 750-1000 hours who flies turbine 135 will likely be able to bypass the regionals 12 months from now when they hit 1500

The regional well is just about dry with the big4 hiring a pilot an hour 24/7/365. They will be taking 1500 hours and solid experience soon.

 

So get 200 hours of turbine ME and put in apps everywhere. Unlike the regionals, the ULCCs NEED FOs because they lose a lot more FOs to the legacies than they do CAs. By the time they are a CA at NK they are now making north of $270k plus 15% and the golden handcuffs are starting. It becomes more and more difficult to give up what you’ve got, for sure once you are a lineholder to go back to being an FO on reserve at $100k, even if it’s a better deal in the long run. So while regionals are bleeding CAs and have a surplus of FOs, the ULCCs are bleeding FOs. So get your 135 hours now and you can soon get all the 121 hours yiu want at an LC/ULCC. And if the next black swan hits and the music stops, an LC/ULCC seniority number is better than a regional one.

 

The problem with this solution, from an F9 perspective, is management is getting wise to this. They are realizing that “Experienced” FOs come to get an A320 type rating and then immediately get picked up and leave.

The majority of applicants going forward are probably going to come from partner programs (ATP, Riddle, Perdue). Until the legacies start hiring right out of flight school, these guys will have to give it at least a +1 year to get some time experience. Unlike their experienced counterparts who leave very quickly.