Will the regionals pay better after next year
 

I know you can hardly make a living as a regional pilot, especially that first year, but with the new law going into effect next year, would it be worth it to get on now with a regional in hopes of them raising the pay? If they want ATP pilots only, then they will have to raise the pay right? Or would this new law potentially put them out of business?

It'll take MANY years.

No need to. People that can afford to be pilots still will try. Theres a large surplus right now, and the trend seems to be going towards larger rj's, which means less planes and pilots. How long have we been saying there's a pilot shortage.

As in most, if not all business environments, supply and demand will be the strongest influence on pilot compensation. "Supply" may be influenced by new regulations. It is fair to say, that over time, pay will increase if the "supply" weakens and the demand remains the same or increases.

Pinnacle won't (again) until about 2023....


edit....unless you are in the top 3 of management

My golden rules of aviation employment:

1.) I believe it when I see it on the ramp and the type on my certificate (as in "we're going to be getting....insert larger aircraft here")

2.) I believe it when the direct deposit hits my account

I would not, repeat-NOT take on a whole bunch of debt chasing a pilot shortage that has been predicted since at least 1991. I have a feeling we are moving from a period of extremely oversupplied with pilots to a period of being oversupplied or simply supplied with pilots. No shortage.

Also, we are right on the very cusp of age 65 retirements and the ATP law coming into effect. And Pinnacle is gutting employee pay/benefits, Eagle has furloughed, may furlough more, American mainline may furlough. The economy still sucks and the airlines are merging and reducing flights. The airlines are very likely to replace smaller planes with *fewer* bigger planes....net change equals fewer pilots. Sorry bro, I wish things were better, too.

EDIT: Good call Mooney, and STD Deviation...nice avatar. You're alright in my book ;)

Its amazing to read about a pilot shortage on one thread, then read about pncl, eagle, and maybe amr getting ready to forlough. I guess when people want something to be true bad enough, facts just dont matter. PS: Im calling it now, retirement age is going up within a few years.

Understand that most regionals are unionized as well adds another hurdle to the equation. I'm not pro or con to unions but at PDT, they tried offering a $5000 sign on bonus around 2007. What ended up happening is most first year FOs made more than a 2nd year FO. Union called foul play and the company stopped paying it. Sucked too when you were told in the interview and accepted the position you were gonna get it then during your first day of training, sorry, your union that doesn't even protect you till after being here a year took care of it.

All the trends point to regional pay going lower and lower and lower and lower. It is not going up.

Keep in mind that this new law basically returns the new hire minimums to what they competitively were for years and years. Not too long ago a regional wouldn't look at you unless you had a couple of thousand TT and 400-500 multi. Those were MINIMUMS. I know the younger "ME" generation would prefer to be owed, or given a job, but once again were are returning to a minimum qualification to be in front of the door. It's about time. I

I'm with you until you say the "me"generation. I'd like to point out the baby boomer generation has f'd this country up beyond repair

Will there be a shortage? Will pay increase? Who really knows. The retirement numbers point to a lot of movement, but like others have pointed out, a reduction in frequency in exchange for larger capacity might offset some of the retirements.
I am going to try something crazy for this site and look at some positives. People are traveling at an increased rate every year. The mainline partners are making near record profits despite the high fuel cost. Foreign markets are growing and offering attractive compensation packages to pilots of various levels of experience. There is scheduled attrition averaging over 2000 pilots a year for the next decade. Even with the unfortunate events at Comair, Pinnacle, and Eagle, there has been a large amount of growth at the regional ranks the past 18 months.
This industry has always been hindsight 20/20, it's a gamble on where pay will go. But if you already have your ratings, and are waiting for pay to go up, I would suggest get in ASAP, one of the only constants in this game is seniority is everything.

+1, I agree.

???? No there hasn't.... Who are you talking about?

I know who he is talking about............ In before the lock.

What growth are you talking about? The Only hiring regionals have done is for attrition, or when one airline loses flying and another gains it, that is not growth that is moving pieces.

You don't understand. Try being at a company for 5 years makin substandard money while your company cries poor and then offers 5k to a new hire.

Get over it.

The MEC was protecting their membership.

So far there has been announced furloughs of 450 at Pinnacle, less than 100 at Eagle, all of which were not on property 18 months ago, and 147 currently furloughed at Comair. Expressjet/ASA alone have hired over 700, Skywest isn't too far behind that, Air Wisconsin has been running constant classes, throw in the hiring of Compass, Republic, Horizon, Commutair, Piedmont, and our favorite Gojets, and there has been a lot of growth. That also isn't including the 500+ hires at Eagle either. I know we hate positive slants but the numbers don't lie.

Is that capacity growth? Or just replacing those who have jumped ship? Is anyone taking new aircraft deliveries (not re-shuffled frames from other whipsawed carriers)?

none or very little if any capacity growth. 00 picked up some stuff from Alaska/Horizon, put probably lost a bit somewhere else. If anything, shrinkage. Just a shifting of the pilots and lots of attrition. Re-shuffling etc....Some, but not much in retirements.

Unfortunately the two carriers who added the most planes, Eagle with almost 50 cr7's and Colgan with their 30 Q's , are not doing so well. Skywest added a few, as did Compass. Expressjet pulled some from the desert. Unsure on the rest.

added aircraft over what period of time? The past 0-2 years or the past 5 years? Was it just shifting aircraft around? Some aircraft are always being added or brought in from the desert wasteland as older aircraft fall dead.

I don't see any significant pay raises coming any time soon. Maybe a couple thousand dollar bump on first and second year pay... that's it. The airlines will try to get away with paying what they are paying as long as they can. Also, rising oil prices doesn't mean anything good for us pilots.

I can't predict the future, but if things stay the way they are trending now, there will be fewer pilots down the road. Is it enough to trigger a bona fide shortage? I don't know. There are fewer students now than there was 5-10 years ago. With avgas being $6/gallon and loans near impossible to get (unless you are attending a university) flight training is out of reach for a lot of people. This is a double-edged sword, though, because fewer students means that it is going to be tougher for pilots to get up to those ATP mins to get hired by airlines in the first place.

Will the regionals pay better after next year? Yes. All of your wildest dreams will come true.

I'm sure there is a point where contracting regionals doesn't make financial sense for the mainline carriers. If pay goes up, and/or supply of pilots declines then I could see more routes going back to mainline. The infamous pilot shortage (if it ever happens) will cause the regionals to go extinct.

and my ex-wife will let me voluntarily lower my spousal support. One of my wildest dreams.........

This is true. The minimums were lowered to the FAR minimums because of the pilot shortage. It already happened. We're just too naive and optimistic to realize that it already happened, and the results were not what we were expecting. There might be another one in the future, but overall wages will not increase. There just might be a raise to new hire pay at the lowest level (regionals).

Yeah, I would say that 2006-2007 was a shortage by at least some definition. As mentioned I believe compensation was raised, but with new hire bonuses, not increased pay for the pilot group. I really think the economy needs to roar (or bubble depending on how you see things) to get the crazy hiring of 2006-2007. My two cents.

One one of two ways that I see.

1 is government intervention. This won't happen because airlines have lobbyists and can always "get their way" for their "economic success".

2 is if pilot's take a stand and do not accept cuts/demand higher pay. Then many airlines would not be able to survive, supply would finally be smaller than demand (which is what you want in any NORMAL business, rather than having excess of pilots and planes and routes), many pilots would lose their jobs, meaning less of a pilot shortage, but those pilots and airlines that would survive would be in a much better position to provide decent benefits and wages, because they could charge higher prices and would have less competition.

It's a lose-lose situation. At some point, this industry became artificially inflated and supported (buying into the idea that you can spend a few years at a regional and "hop" to a major, while the economics of airline flying changed and everyone and their daughter started a regional airline). It won't end well.

The execs are in the business of making money for them and the shareholders. At some point they'll SCREAM about a pilot shortage I'm sure, this will be because no one wants to work for them. If we are lucky, they might start to dry up and die at that time.

The regionals were a trap for us stupid pilots. They called it a stepping stone and removed all of the other stones. So now we are stuck. Either jump ship or keep truckin. But I don't see how anything at the regionals will ever get better. The business model is predicated on people that are making the sacrifice for something better. But no one wants to believe that this "something better" doesn't really exist. Gotta love the Koolaid:rolleyes:.

If we ever want to get ahead as a pilots we need to be much smarter than them.

exactly. fml.

In this day and age supply and demand is a one way street. Anytime there is a surplus of skilled labor, wages are pushed down. However, any shortages are usually remedied by either decreasing the entry requirements or increasing the availablity of visas for foreign workers. Either way wages are held down.

If airlines cannot attracted qualified applicants for crap wages the last thing they will do is offer to increase pay in any meaningfull way. My guess is that they will start ab-initio training programs which will require some sort of long term contract.

I work for a major collegiate flight school, and I also have an MBA. By no means does this mean I can predict the future, but the data from our end shows the numbers are drying up. I graphed out our total annual flight hours between 2003 and late 2011. Our total flight hours have dropped 40% between 2007 and 2011, enrollment down 42% Not so ironically, our management made large aircraft and avionics investments right at the market peak in 2007. Literally bought right at the top.

There doesn't appear to be an end to the trend yet. The college is pretty tight lipped, but the instructors have received a $5/hr pay cut November 2011, our personal use of aircraft was cut this month, 10 new students are enrolled for the Summer I semester (1/3 of what it has been over the last 5 years) and there is talk of a fleet reduction of 5 aircraft. Anyone should be able to read between the lines on this one.

-And another thing- the longer there is a surplus of pilots, it's just all the more likely that it will change. The labor market will correct its self, and we are seeing the beginning of that.

The regionals stopped being a stepping stone a long time ago. Since when does spending a decade of time and making over $100k a year at the top of the pay scale, qualify you as a "stepping stone"? In what other industry would you be considered, merely an apprentice, and moving on, if you had a decade of experience and earned that kind of money? Supply and demand will ultimately dictate our pay and benefits. Not some perceived notion of entitlement.

Hey guys. What's up? What's going on?

Similar situation where I'm at. Went from a fleet of almost 30 planes 5 years ago down to only 14 now. Enrollment way down over the past 5 years or so. Technically they didn't cut instructor pay, but they froze pay raises, and we lost a couple of instructors to the airlines who are not going to be replaced. The college just tells us instead we need to work 50+ hour work weeks to absorb the extra workload. (the joys of being salaried lol)

So, yes, there are fewer pilots coming up through the pipeline. I attribute this to the difficulty of getting student loans for flight training, plus the obscene expense that flight training has become with $6/gallon 100LL. If there was a cheaper way to get in I believe more pilots would.

Things will get tighter at the airlines, but they will hold off on significant pay raises and do whatever it takes to keep costs down as long as they can. I envision route cuts, and flying fewer flights in larger RJ's (e.g. 2/day trips in a 70 seater vs 4/day in a 40 seater). Then there is the possibility of ab initio programs causing students to be in debt to airlines and stuck at low pay for many years. I'm sure there's other ways the airlines could find ways to cut costs.

What I see in the near future is pay pretty much holding still, and building hours becoming a lot harder. A year or so from now there will be a glut of flight instructors and low time pilots waiting for the pilots ahead of them to get to ATP mins, and hiring for low-time jobs will be at a standstill like it was in 2009-2010.

+2 my friend. Until we start focusing on the size of the W2 and less on the size of the plane, we're screwed. Too many RJ pilots (or potential RJ pilots, i.e. CFI's etc.) are willing to trade a bigger plane for a smaller W2. Can't blame them. I made the same mistake.

Funny thing is, talk to the guys in the biggest planes, and they're happy to give up a few thousand pounds of MTOW in favor of a few thousand dollars of pay. That should tell you something.

If my regional FO pay topped out at 200k, I'd have no interest in flying that DAL 777.

2-3 day trips out of home base with that kind of pay? I'll fly whatever they want, Cessna 402C or 747, makes no difference.