Dawn or Dusk for Regional Carriers?
 

The 35th Annual FAA Aviation Forecast Conference was held on March 10th. One of the sessions was titled "New Decade...Dawn or Dusk for Regional Carriers?" There were three presentations regarding the future of this type of flying.

There are some very interesting charts and graphs concerning the "Regional" industry that give some good insight into the direction this segment is heading and how the industry views "regional" airlines.

Unfortunately there are no videos of the presentations but the slide shows can be found here:

What Does the Future Hold for Regional Aviation?
Hamlin Transportation Consulting

Not Even Your Older Brother's Regional Airlines
Regional Airline Association

The Future of Scope Clauses
International Center for Air Transportation

winglet

Dusk for regionals as we've known them the last decade or so. Dawn for a new era that I think has yet to be determined in its entirety.

Dusk..................F4D is over and done with.

Twilight but the sun is setting.

http://www.faa.gov/news/conferences_...er%20Cohen.pdf

One level of safety for the entire airline
industry---------Everyone can now be tired...
• Same government regulations, same level of
oversight....Just 30% of mainline pay...
• Every regional airline exceeds federal safety
standards....How can this be true? At my airline we just barely meet the recurrent training (Testing) requirement. Ground school for just 2 days a year. They took away my FOM and POH. My ground school instructor had never been de-iced. Schedulers always pushing duty regulations. Contract violations daily......

They must be exceeding standards by handing out those free ear plugs for the walkarounds!

If it means more jobs at mainline; I hope it is evening civil twilight

Here's the way to get it back, make the codeshare (major) legally liable for accidents of any carrier flying their colors, you'll see flying back at mainline so fast it will make your head spin. It's the protection that the regionals offer from law suits that are a major draw, if you could protect yourself from 50% of the liability arising from your operations but still collect the revenue, wouldn't you do it?

You get two days of ground school a year? At Delta, we get zero. Its all done on CD and then you go to the school house for two days of sim work. IMO we've gone to far to the cheap end of the training spectrum.

I cant take an optomist or pessimist side on this one.

...so Ill say its high noon on the day of the winter solstice.

I put a sticker on the door at the training dept changing thier name to the testing dept. I hear stories about companies having 2 weeks of training crammed into 4 weeks. I also hear stories about people getting more than 10 days off a month....

I do not believe a thing that the RAA say when it comes to safety

Why not? Safety is their number 1 Priority, just ask them they'll tell you. It's right behind covering their collective Hindquarters, and Profits and whatever else might be of operational concern to their members, but safety is number one just ask them.

CrippleHawk,

Exactly! It's interesting to see the industry "leaders" reveal their intentions.

"RAA’s Strategic Safety Initiative Recommendations

Create a single database of pilot records
Conduct random fatigue tests
Examine commuting
Extend background-check timeframe
Audit cockpit voice recordings
Improve tracking and analysis of check rides"

The very people who created the "race-to-the-bottom" are proposing the solution to their problem is blaming the employees.

winglet

Example of random fatigue test.

Tester
"are you tired?"
Pilot
"no"

::this concludes the test::

We have been doing alot of FDR downloads recently

Who is we? And for what purpose?

Dawn for management and shareholders. Dusk for Pilots, FA's, rampers, dx'ers etc..

I mean us A&P mechanic (I am a MAG mechanic out a Dulles). This started a few months after the Colgan 3407. They are doing it in the name of safety or so they say. (they claim they want to see how the a/cs are being treated by pilots etc etc etc.)

But I feel that MGMT is just trying to screw with their employess from pilots to MX. And they are trying to find anything to get rid of them. MY company fired 5 people for simple mistakes in paperwork (keep in mind we are understaffed for the work we get, so it's bound to happen).....................and it'sjust not MAG that does this.