The pilot profession has become a zero sum game in the United States. Maybe it always has been.... but now more than ever.... airline managements have put everyone in a zero sum situation.

By this I mean the only way someone does well is at the expense of someone else. Good fortune is not created..... it is simply transferred.

I understand that a career in our field, particularly in this millennium, is stressful and worrisome. A decade ago everyone was talking about a 30 year career or more at a major airline. It was not improbable to get on at a Major airline before your 30th birthday (perhaps well before) and there was no discussion of raising the retirement age.

The only people considering a full career at a Regional airline were those who did not graduate or attend college thus making them unable to meet the application requirements. The people who chose this path were happier than they would have been in other careers not requiring a degree and flight training schools were all to eager to market an airline career to the 80% of the population not holding a B.S. or B.A.

Fast forward to today.... We only have 3 major airlines left. There are fewer Low Cost Carriers (SWA /Airtran merger). There is less opportunity for advancement..... (i.e. upgrade at your regional to try to get on with one of the few remaining career targets.) The only opportunity many see for anything to advance them and prepare them for their escape from hell is the demise of a competitor and transfer of assets. (more planes at my regional).

This predicament is not providing the happiness that this career was supposed to deploy.

Many years ago I worked at Comair. It was a regional that I looked at as nothing more than a stepping stone to make it to my major airline job before I was 30. This didn’t happen. As we all know Comair ceased operations days ago. It was a good job for a lot of people who never looked to go anywhere else. Many, if not most, that fit this category did not have the college degree and were not able to apply to the Delta, United, NWA, CAL, etc’s of the world. The were marketed training from the Comair Academy or other similar places and had good jobs they viewed as long term careers at Comair.

What does unemployment feel like right now? I bet it’s hell. Not much of any hiring unless you want to go live in a third world country far away from family and home. Likewise, telling Pinnacle pilots to tank their airline for the greater good is nonsense. If they wish to do so.... fine. But it is not for anyone else to say.

There are thousands of RJ pilots. THOUSANDS. And most of them are all trying to pack themselves in to a tiny hole of hiring that might happen next year for a few hundred jobs at our last remaining Legacy airlines.

If the competitive nature of the regional industry has put Comair and Pinnacle among others in the crosshairs because their pilots are too senior and therefore cost more than pilots at Compass..... Perhaps the answer is cutting the longevity. In other words, take the pay scale that you have and erase everything above year 8. Everyone with less than 8 years would see no change and everyone above that would be at 8 year pay.

I know that senior guys would shudder at this and expect everyone to take a percentage cut all the way down. But everyone is not the issue with viability. Longevity is the issue with viability. Spending a career at a minor league team and longevity raises is the issue.

This will never happen of course. Unions work for the senior guys. Their 2% is more money than the bottom guys 2%. Cutting longevity off at 8 years would significantly cut union revenue.

But I hope people that read this website can at least come to a conclusion that their is a zero sum game that forever pits pilots against one another completely destroying collective gains and that someday newly formed airlines like Compass will be the Comair of tomorrow. Thinking outside the box and understanding the current reality is a must to try to ovoid the same fate.

I personally dissuaded as many young guys as I could to not pursue this career without a degree. I told them that they would just become a human obstacle for someone else to upgrade and move on and that eventually they would end up clinging to their job while management demanded pay cuts with no good way out.

 

It's a shell game...as a couple regionals merge, start another one, and voila! Another competitor with all year one pay scales.

Then several years later, yank most of their flying away and give it to someone else.

 

the thought of caping pay rates around 8 yrs for capts is interesting. On the one hand we would not have the ability to make as much money at our regional, on the other hand this could smooth out the booms and busts. The problem today is you work for a regional, for whatever reason you elect not to pursue mainline and many years down the road your company is no longer competitive and goes out of business. The biggest problem for us is then we are faced with starting over at year one. If we were capped at 8 yr captain we wouldn't make as much but we would also be much less likely to have to start over at year one. In addition, this may cut down on the number of guys who fall into the career regional trap.

 

No, you'll just make less money between bankruptcy's.
"Take what you can, give nothing back."
"It's just good business."

to great lines from a few favorite movies of mine

 

Apprentice FO pay, journeyman FO pay, apprentice CA pay, journeyman CA pay. Based on weight. National seniority list.

There - fixed.

 

This thread has finally gotten on to an interesting discussion. Longevity is only a problem at the Regionals because we have negotiated the pay scales that we have. Why does Pinnacle have a 20 year pay scale while Delta only has a 12 year scale? Easy, the senior guys (who knew they couldn't go anywhere else) demanded it so that they could make $100k at a company that was never designed to be a career destination. People sticking around for a career isn't only a problem for the company though. It is a problem for every pilot who is hired after the pilot who sticks around. Upgrades stop and now the First Officers are stuck in a position where they have no hope of getting the PIC time that so many companies require of their applicants. Add to that the fact that you have to go back to year 1 pay if you decide to leave, and things get even more stagnant. So how do fix it? In my opinion the best fix will never happen.

FloridaGator brought up a lot of really good points in his post, the most interesting being to stop the longevity scale at 8 years. I would suggest doing one better. Pay all 50 seat First Officers $X/hr and all Captains $Y/hr and adjust yearly, or based on aircraft size. As you gain longevity, you would get a better schedule and have more access to premium pay, but your hourly wage would stay the same. The relatively high First Officer pay would guarantee a steady stream of applicants. The relatively low Captain pay would encourage more people to move on. With Captains moving on, the company enjoys less longevity issues while the pilots enjoy quick upgrades and better career progression (thus increasing the applicant pool that much more).

 

If you really want to add a "motivator".... You can start trending your longevity down. In other words, after 8 year pay you can make 9 year pay equal to 7 year pay and so on.

At year 15, your pay could be equal to year one pay. It would be like an arc.

Yes, I know this is crazy and wont ever happen. It is more of a hyperbole to try to say starting over at another regional sucks and thinking outside the box will be critical to get your airline to survive and avoid the fate that Comair suffered.

 

if you guys think pilot pay, especially senior pilot pay, is the root behind Pinnacle's ailments, I want some of the company kool aid you are drinking. Had we not started flying q's for below cost, bought Colgan and Mesaba and the associated training costs etc, got a fancy buiding downtown and given out millions in parachutes and top raises, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Same goes for any airline. Sounds more like a case of entitlement and "get out of MY seat" if you ask me. The same ones that are whining about capping longevity and cutting pay for senior guys now are the ones that were telling their negotiating committes to "shoot for the starts on our contract, if we miss at least we will hit the moon." When and if you guys get to a major and management comes at you with the same proposals you are talking about to "save the company" are you going to think its a good idea then? no because it directly affects you in a negative way. There's not a fast track to everything in life, guys...no matter what the school propaganda tells you. And to think that the senior guys who have been there more than X years are still only there because they can't move on because they don't have a degree, busted 4 checkrides, have 7 dui's etc. as previously mentioned is crap. Some people have established family where they are based, are happy with 18 days off and 80-120k, don't want to uproot family, miss kids soccer games/birthdays/christmas AGAIN and don't associate the size of their genitals with the size of plane they fly.

 

Yeah. It's just that simple.

 

You make some excellent points. I am a former Colgan Pilot and I've got to tell you, buying us was a complete waste of time and money. All that being said, we can't go back and change that.

I think this discussion is larger than the problems at Pinnacle. You are absolutely correct that Pinnacle wasted a ton of money on buying Colgan, bidding contracts at below cost, moving the office downtown and so on. The thing is, it is not only Pinnacle that is in trouble. In five years Regions Air, Big Sky, Sky Way, Comair, Mesaba and Colgan have disappeared. In addition, Gulfstream, Mesa, American Eagle and now Pinnacle have gone Chapter 11.

There is no doubt that pilot pay is not what put us in the mess we are in at Pinnacle, however, there is also no doubt that they are going to take as much of that pilot pay away as they can.

All that being said, if pay scales were topped out at a certain longevity, theoretically, in addition to limiting the boom of the good times, we may be able to limit the bust of having to go all the way back to year one when our company goes away all together.

By no means am I trying to display an entitlement attitude. I did not go to a 141 school, I was not sold on the thought of one year in the right seat, one year in the left seat and off to the majors. I have put in five years at a regional and would love to move on to another airline. In fact that is what I do all day every day, apply to other companies hoping that I can get out of here.