Is there a looming regional FO hiring push?
 

With the Legacy carriers, LCCs, etc… slowing or stopping hiring, the sucking chest wound of regional captain staffing will probably start to close up. I personally have three friends at the regionals who tried like heck to get out as first officers but were unsuccessful. They’ve all now shifted their focus to upgrading at their regional. I imagine they aren’t alone and we’ll see many regionals stabilize their captain staffing a bit which could in turn open up more demand for FOs again.

It’s also no secret that many regionals have had aircraft parked during this post covid hiring tsunami. While the big three have certainly tried to reduce their dependence on regional flying (a good thing overall), it’s still very important to feed traffic from small and medium markets to their hubs, so I imagine they’d love to get many of these parked aircraft back flying again.

With all this in mind, is it possible we’re going to see some more steady regional FO hiring return as current FOs upgrade and parked jets potentially come back online?

yes. Even probable. Question will be when and how much. ie how deep is the captain hole? Do they want to flip the labor pool so that the captains have an easy life (ie doing get a lot of TPIC) and the FO's fly their tails off so that they regenerate a deep pool of legal-to-upgrade FO's

The 737 heavy carriers pausing hiring is an interesting opportunity for Delta and American. If I were them, I would shift my hiring 100% to commutair and then move to Mesa once it folds.

If so, it would also seem plausible then that the upgrade times at said regionals would begin to steadily increase.

I know a couple of regional first officers that were waiting on class dates at Southwest, but will now upgrade to captain at a regional. Not only does thier spot as a first officer need to be replaced, but they will be able to support another first officer while flying as captain. I'm not expecting another mad rush, but hiring should pick up at regionals as the year moves forward.

Yep. The MAX certification and other Boeing problems may actually allow the big three to slow their flow and similar programs long enough to breathe new life into regionals once headed for extinction proving the old saying about it being an ill wind...etc.

Not that it won't be an ill wind for those who might have already gone to the big three if the airframes hadn't stopped coming off the assembly lines.

"Airframe"

From Merriam-Webster:



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Once Boeing fixes their problems, and production gears up with quality products, there will be a hiring frenzy at the majors, once again.

You and your predictions. Who’s gonna make it, who’s not. A year ago you were telling everyone the regionals are done.

You know, Dante pull the fortune tellers in the Eighth Circle of Hell for a reason. So watch your mouth.

Not really, all the airlines were looking at reductions in hiring. The 737 deliveries are being covered to a extent by delaying retirements. The massive hiring push was covid early retirement programs induced. Not happening this time. Hiring will resume at about half the covid rate. If the economy turns there might not be any near term rebound.

For at least one of the three legacies (wouldn't surprise me if the other two are following suit for the same reasons), the slow in hiring is to allow their training department to catch up. It's a waste of time and resources to offer applicants class dates 5 months out, only to have said applicant receive a job offer from another carrier with an earlier class date.

It's easier to tell the share-holders the current headwinds are from unexpected outside factors, rather than "We put ourselves in this position with early retirement buyouts that were too aggressive". I think Boeing is the convenient scapegoat that showed up at the "right time".

TPIC matters again folks. Take that first available upgrade.

Hiring at half the Covid rate is still one of the largest rates in 20+ years. That is more than twice the historical average.

Well GoJet won't be a part of a looming regional FO hiring push. Reddit posts talking about FO applicants who were about to start class in a couple weeks are being told no class dates until 2025.

Now is that a GoJet problem? Or are we about to see a bunch of other regionals follow the same path?

Another factor is that in the golden wave of hiring that ended (1500 and a pulse) there was a relative scarcity of 1500+ pilots. Since the Captain shortage hit, theres'been a growing glut of 1500+ hour pilots with no 121 job offers. Regionals have thousands of applicants in the pool, and the numbers are swelling each month as 135, CFI's, etc. continue to accrue hours.

Even if FO hiring increases again, it might not be felt by most in the applicant pool.

And college. Pick back up where you left off with that online degree.

I doubt too many airlines will re-instate a hard degree requirement (they like the flexibility to hire outside of competitive norms when it suits them), but the degree will be the next competitive hard-stop after TPIC.

Looks like the goal post is once again being reset.
TPIC, college degree, minimal checkride failures are prime realestste again.
Until the next hiring wave that is.

Posted this in another thread but certianly applies here. The short of it, no there will not be a hige regional FO push.

There are a couple of issues that are going to impact Regional hiring for the next year or so at least. First is that all the Majors have either stopped or dramatically reduced hiring due to factors that mainly have to do with aircraft issues (Pratt and Whitney engines and MAX issues) and delivery (Max delays and huge backlog of NEOs). Secondly, the Legacy’s took a lot of the Regional flying in house (This is a GOOD thing) and I don’t see them giving it back anytime soon. The Regional model was getting out of control. At Republic I had whole trips where I was doing Hub to Hub flying or Hub to big to medium sized city such as CVG, ELP, JAX, etc. Regional flying was never intended for that.

So my crystal ball says expect Regional hiring to be sporadic for the foreseeable future. I heard GoJet canceled all new hire classes and other Regionals are seeing increasing delays from CJO to class date.

There were also a lot of abandoned EAS routes and small town destinations that took a beating. I would expect the legacies to try and refill those markets. After all, they do feed into their networks. AA and UA were running greyhound buses!