FAR 117 rule isn't solving the real problem
 

I may not have been in the airline industry as long as some of you may have and I am by no mean an expert. However since this new 117 rule has been talked about I immediately thought of the Buffalo crash and analyzed it a bit for myself and noticed that behind the fatigued pilots lied a whole other world which I then began to realize is a norm for regional pilots and some major airline pilots.

What I realized was that many pilots simply cannot afford to live on their low paying salaries and are then forced to have other jobs, they also often cannot afford to get a comfortable housing arrangement in those popular bases that their regionals have due to high cost of living vs low income so the are then forced into having to stay at uncomfortable crash pads and commute from other states on long flight as in the case of the Buffalo crash.

From speaking to fellow pilots I have heard them saying that if they made a little more money that they would even consider moving their families with them to their base and not push themselves into working an extra job or even two to cover their bills.

We have all been there at the low paying flying gigs but I think that the pay is a direct link to safety and fatigue. The 117 is addressing a small part of the issue but as some would agree that this rule has taken a bigger toll on their QOL and family life as well as being able to credit more at work which could turn them into burning themselves out in another job or two and that is the issue we need to address first!

Now I do not blame the airline management teams for taking advantage of us because we agreed to come work for these wages in most cases, but if we are going to try and fix the issue then the pay and QOL needs to be the top priority. I am a big believer that a person is much more well rested and less stressed out and bothered when he or she is financially stable.
Besides with all the regionals having staffing issues this is a great time to get together and try to push for something better, and I hope that AE and XJT will stick to their word and vote down those concessions that they are being asked to take. I say if the regional airlines cannot afford their product (Pilots to operate their airplanes) then let them go out of business or pay the price, it's simple!

I also came up with a system that may or may not work and I'd like to know what you guys think about it:
Since airlines try to keep ticket prices as low as possible to stay competitive, and the only thing they cannot change is the fees and taxes that the airport and government charge, therefore I think that there should be a government program in place to charge $5-20 (I don't know how many tickets are sold each month in the US to make a difference in a pilots paycheck) per ticket sold which would then increase everyone's ticket prices evenly across the board and have that amount divided evenly amongst all US airline pilots to help supplement their income.

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts and if you think these are valid points and you know of a way to promote these ideas please let me know and lets try to make things better for us all!!!

Yeah, that's going to happen. The airlines will never stand for ANY increase in ticket prices that doesn't go directly into their pocket of the tax coffers. Name me ONE other industry where labor costs are subsidized by the taxpayer.

Only regional pilots are underpaid, and then only as low senority FOs. Also, regional airlines don't sell tickets, they sell flying services to larger arlines, the cost of which is largely determined by the price of that regional's labor. I don't think a ticket tax would be the best solution. Maybe reduced pay for higher senority pilots with a raise at the bottom? I'd actually like to see a flatter pay structure. For example: FOs earn $45k, captains $75k, with opportunities to make more, such as overtime, holiday pay, longevity bonus, etc.

Virtually every minimum or close to minimum wage employer has their payroll subsidized with taxpayer dollars in the form of welfare/WIC/medicade or whatever other government aid for the poor their employees qualify for.
One Walmart's Low Wages Could Cost Taxpayers $900,000 Per Year, House Dems Find

They are not underpaid. No one is forcing anyone to work for low wages. If a person chooses to make $16,000 a year as a Regional pilot, that is his/her choice. He/she can make more money working full time as a grocery store cashier.

There is simply an abundance of people that want to fly for a living.

Writing, acting, photography, baseball, flying....too many people enter these fields and only those at the very top can earn a decent living. Somehow this message doesn’t get through. The pay scale is similar to baseball; the people at the top do very well, and those one step down (AAA league or the Regionals) earn something feeble, and the rest never earn a dime and have to find another career.

If its about safety we should "pass the hat" for police and firemen. Most pilots are pilots for a reason… it's a life long dream job.

A school bus driver holds the future of 25-50 young children each with the potential to become President. Are we going to pay him/her 100,000$ a year?

You guys are all right about the fact that being a pilot is a choice and it might not be clear to everyone who is looking to fly for a living how hard it is to start and how little bit of money you could be making in the beginning, however we have all paid a lot of money for our training which may be the mistake because it is not a good return on our investment in ourselves if we cannot pay back the loans or justify the amount of money we spent on this training, but this industry is due for some restructuring and I hope that there would be a way to bring positive change to our fellow pilots who are having a hard time starting up.

And as mentioned above we practically subsidize ALL of these low paid citizens one way or another with our taxes. I'm sure that many if not all 1st year pay FOs at the regionals could qualify for ALL of the government benefit plans which we end up paying for with increased taxes. We should shoot for high wages and not take it from the other tax payers. I actually looked into these benefits and I did qualify for them, however I refused to take it, but I just wanted to see where did I fall being an airline pilot which led me to slowing finding my way out of aviation since it seems like a pyramid scheme in a sense

No.

I lived on regional pay with $60k+ in student loans, and I know -exactly- how much it sucks.

But you voluntarily accepted the job, knowing full well the compensation, benefits, and job locations. Act like an adult and accept responsibility for YOUR decisions.

That's not to say you shouldn't strive for compensation more commiserate with being a high speed aluminum tube operator...but look at the last decade of history man, the odds simply aren't in your favor. Having an expectation that the "Great Pilot Shortage" is going to provide a windfall is setting one up for HUGE disappointment.

Any and every time somebody tries to link higher pay to safer pilots, their argument FAILS and it FAILS hard.

It is absolutely a pyramid scheme. Everyone thinks they're going to be a 747 International Captain and make huge bucks.

The truth of the matter is only a small fraction of pilots will ever make it to a Major airline, much less a whale left seat.

A lot of you are going to finish your career in the left seat of an RJ so you'd better sack up and stop voting for substandard contracts. And you'd better be willing to strike to get what you deserve.

You're right.

Say a regional FO doesn't make enough money to live in base and can't afford a hotel or crashpad, so they commute in on the redeye for a 13 hour duty/7 block hour day (take-home pay ~$120 by the way)... they're perfectly safe. I wouldn't have any qualms putting my family on said pilot's fifth flight of the day. :rolleyes:

I was that poor regional FO, once upon a time.

I spent 7 nights in September 2006 sleeping on a couch in a crewroom in PHL. I had a sleeping bag and pillow there for just that reason.

It was most certainly not ideal, but as a poor regional FO it was the best solution I had to balance my financial situation as a commuting probationary FO while ensuring I met my responsibility of starting a trip rested.

We all make decisions every day, and flying for a regional airline isn't slavery or even indentured servitude. Nobody is forcing somebody to take a redeye to save a few bucks, and let's be honest with ourselves, if pay went up $400/mo you and I both know a HUGE percentage of pilots would pocket that while continuing the actions they are already doing.

More pay doesn't make safer pilots.

I've had better sleep in a 737 jumpseat than in a crewroom. You're delusional and flat out incorrect.

I thought he was pretty much spot on.

Maybe, but I think the market price of a first year regional FO is probably more than minimum wage. There's another force at work here, and choice has nothing to do with it. I wonder if low senority FOs are subsidizing over paid regional captains to some degree.

The PHL shared crewroom was pretty darn quiet from 11-5:30am. I wouldn't call it a Ritz Carlton but I was always plenty rested for the start of my trip.

I'd surmise anybody that gets better sleep in a 737 jumpseat than a crewroom in the middle of the night wouldn't have any issues being rested after taking a redeye into their trip.

All that said, I'm curious to know how I'm "delusional" and "flat out incorrect".

Again, *my* experiences when *I* was a probationary RJ FO...

What is with the constant "overpaid regional captains are taking regional fo pay" I keep seeing in various threads? There are exactly 0 overpaid regional pilots currently working in the US. No full time regional captain should be making less than $120K and no regional FO should be making less than $60K. Regional FO pay sucks (I am one), and should improve, but the improvement should not come out of the captains check. We all are worth more.

The pay and QOL is directly dependent upon the contract and work rules each pilot group decides they can accept......

My previous experience included Comair in the very early 2000's..... I think I made $24k first year and mid to upper $30s-low $40's from year 2-5..... Coupled with a massive route structure and good regional work rules, I was able to make it work as a single guy in his mid 20's.... Was it ideal...no. But I made as much as a teacher, or a medical intern as a new pilot....

Unfortunately the whipsaw and even younger pilots willing to do it for less in hopes of growth and a quick upgrade, ruined what was good at Comair.( talking about CHQ here BTW).. When the pay and work rules weren't sufficient.....I quit


If the situation doesn't work, bust your a.ss and work on an escape route.. The pay/QOL is only going backwards.. Too many pussified pilots too afraid of the threat of unemployment. I'd like to see the constant barrage on regional wages end, but I just don't see an end in sight considering many regional guys are still in the infancy stage of their careers.

$120k? Is that number based on anything, or just part of the "more" that everyone wants? Take a look at comparable jobs with similar training requirements and barriers to entry, they don't pay $120k.

Here are two salaries for jobs that require more knowledge, experience and training than pilots:

Senior Aerospace Engineer: US Median $93,969
Senior Programmer: US Median $86,494 (This job is hugely in demand!)

But a pilot should get $120k? I think senior pilots' corrupt notion of how much they should be paid plays a big part in how backward pilot compensation has become.

The FAA and government don't care about your quality of life or how much you make. They just want you to fly safe. This concern won't end in higher pay for pilots. If you want the industry to change you have to change it and stop waiting/hoping someone else will do something (alpa, FAA, congress, sky king, etc).

What did those jobs earn 20 years ago? The top 1% earners keep getting richer and richer. That is an easy enough fact to verify. That money comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is lower wages and outsourcing. I am not just talking about the airline industry. The methods and business practices that are common now to accomplish this were probably criminal in the past, but through lobbying almost anything can be made legal with enough $$$. It is a ridiculously hard trend to fight. I did just pull those numbers out of thin air as an example, and I know they are not realistic in this world.
My main point however, was that we should not be looking to raise the pay of first officers at the regional level by reducing the pay of captains at the regional level. That is a shortsighted erosion of the career. Our piece of the mainline profit pie is so skinny that it takes a laser to slice it. Our contributions are worth a bigger slice.

And that worked so well for Comair.

I am sorry, but the simplistic "Follow Me Over the Cliff in the name of ALPA" crap is not what this industry needs.

What we need is unity, and that means that we have to stop eating our young, preying on our weak and washing our hands like Pontius Pilot.

More money does in fact increase safety. Princeton University study finds financial stress can temporarily lower IQ.

It looks like you're either management or a management wannabe with your divide and conquer attitude... There is no reason for any regional pilot to take cuts, our profession has fallen far enough, and the only direction for pay and benefits should be upward!

It's sad that Pilots in the USA still get paid less than bus drivers or cab drivers... flying takes so much more skill and education... :(

and I believe it will soon take the same path here in Europe... :(

Actually, you're wrong, and it has nothing to do with "management" or the so-called profession. It all has to do with simple economics… you have people lining up for a virtual minimum wage job as a regional FO, why on earth should they be paid anything more than the absolute lowest that the company can get away with? Compassion? Uhh… no. The senior management would get hung by the shareholders, investors, owners. It doesn't work that way.

When people stop showing up to interviews and classes at regionals, when they start canceling flights en masse due to lack of crew, when their customers (legacies) start complaining about poor completion/on-time performance due to lack of crew, that's when things might start to change, and particularly if the regional carrier cannot do anything about it since they bid for work way low. But this again brings me to the beginning - nobody forces you to work for a regional or for a subpar paying company.

See, regional airlines bid on their work with legacy airlines with the knowledge that they will always have a steady supply of fresh new pilots willing to work for peanuts. Historically, it has worked. Face it, they are doing their job - providing the contractual feeder lift at the lowest possible cost. Any successful company, and I'm defining 'successful' company as the one that provides the highest return to its owners/shareholders/investors, is the one that always strives to reduce cost and expense wherever possible, increase profit/return for the owners/shareholders/investors and getting the job done as contracted. Squeezing you is doing their job.

This will change when regional airlines can no longer find people willing to work for those wages for whatever reason (banks not providing loans, people not wanting to fly for 20k a year, etc.), and when their business suffers because of it.

This whole cry-me-a-river because a regional FO makes peanuts is nothing but an emotional garbage. The sooner you realize that this is a business, and business decisions are ruthless and leave very little room for compassion, the better off you'll be and the better equipped you'll be to counter it. Until then… you made your bed…

Those jobs do NOT require more knowledge, experience, or training than pilots - they only require more formal education than a pilot.

Also, "Senior" anything in a job description typically means having a good bit of experience and/or tenure; starting wages for PEs and programmers out of college are substantially higher than regional pilot wages today but nowhere close to the figures you have listed.

Bingo! This is supply and demand, and the unfortunate reality. Morally wrong, yes, but I've yet to see any company that is morally sound. The reality is, we choose to spend money on our careers, and then work for peanuts. We are truly our own worst enemies.

Good arguments. But has anyone ever sat down and determined with pencil and paper, just how much tickets will have to sell for to pay a F/O $60k/ yr and Capt $120k/ yr. Figure 39 - 76 seat plane, avg 3 - 4 legs a day.

Dont forget to include cost of F/A salaries, gas, overhead, mx, lease payments on the plane, mgt salaries, insurance, etc, etc.

In no means am I trying to stir the pot, or anything like that. Just wondering if those who say what the pay should be, have they thought about all the numbers involved.

Just for very rough numbers:
120000+60000=180000 total yearly per crew. 180000/800ish block hours per year (thats what I fly) is$225 per hour. Spread over 76 seats that is $2.96 per seat hour to cover the direct pay rate.
Compared to current rough numbers:
90000+40000=130000/800=162.5 for a $2.13/seat hour.

Or to put it another way using above numbers a 2 hour flights crew pay rate costs are $325 now vs $450 at the higher pay rate proposed. $125 for a 2 hour flight is an afterthought compared to the cost of mx, fuel, the airplane itself, landing fees and on and on on.

That's the second time someone has implicated that I'm management. I'm just a poor FO who doesn't want to have to rely on the upgrade or legacy hiring lottery to make a living. There's so much "vote NO!" and "5*ck management" on this site and not much actual discussion. When regional MECs negotiate with management, are their requests based on math, economics, reality? Or are their decisions just focused on status quo and holding the line? The current system doesn't work at the regional level, probably because a regional airline isn't the same business as a national/major carrier with their name on the tail of an RJ. We should stop imitating their system. Our best interests don't align with ALPA's. I wonder if something completely different, negotiated by an independent RALPA would be a better direction for our industry. Fighting concessions and the race to the bottom isn't productive and, as you can easily read in some of these other threads, turns pilots against each other and their current union.

The change will have to come from the top meaning the major partner. They hold all the cards and are dealing them out from the bottom of the deck as they see fit. The regional world does not sell the majority of their seats and have very little control over their revenue, most just survive of scrappy contracts.
In what way this will happen I do not know. Ideally the mainline takes the jets with the crews. Will this happen? not likely because then the door has been opened and future contracts will increase the cost of having the jets on property. Then the carriers left operating with contracted feed will have a big advantage.

Agree, and I have done both jobs. The airline training and pilot background was far more intense and did indeed require a lot of OTJ experience to begin (1500 hours) and the wages are substandard, ludicrous by comparison with other similar professions. Engineering entailed a (very) long haul to finish school, and it was rigorous coursework that included a lot of overnight work to finish, massive loans and so on, but there was zero <0> on OTJ experience required to start a job at $50 to $60k.

Boiler, you make lots of great points on these boards but this is not among them. Strong links can be shown between poverty, lack of sleep, poor nutrition and low academic achievement in school children. Poverty among airline pilots most certainly seems to bear the same linkage. Congress decided as much when they made the current Colgan 3407-driven rule changes. The basic idea is if getting by takes up all your time and energy, that energy is gone and cannot be expended somewhere else (ie. flying safely).

I am among those who think the markets have failed to insure adequate salaries for entry- level airline pilots. When the market fails, regulation must take over. If we have airplanes falling out of the sky and the cause is linked to low wages and fatigue (and they have been linked in multiple places), then something is wrong with market wage and the system should be fixed. Congress stepped in and mandated new rules to fix the problem, we'll see how effective that is, but the cause still remains pretty clear- low wages.

I know that.

But I'd submit that very few people on APC have ever seen genuine "poverty", and REAL poverty should not be confused with regional pilots crying "broke" (again, I was one). I doubt any probationary regional airline pilots (short of maybe Lakes pilots) are worrying about where their next meal is going to come from.

Fatigue happens, but jumpseating overnight into the start of a trip is a decision. And as I've demonstrated, such a decision is optional - there are alternatives for somebody who can't afford a $75 hotel room 4+ times a month.

My issue is people who seem to intimate higher compensation = safer pilots. That is simply not true, even if you replace "safer" with "more rested". Higher compensation would certainly make it easier for people, but its no easy silver bullet.

I'm still paying off school 13 years later, and I can tell you with $800/mo in student loan payments between me and my wife we would be wondering where our next meal is coming from at regional wages if that was my only job. I'm not saying it's right, wrong or indifferent, but the pay model kind of stinks.. Maybe back when 250 and the ink drying on your commercial was the hiring mins the pay made sense.

But now where you have to have 1500/ATP? That's like paying pizza delivery boy wages for a semi truck driver hauling dynamite.

This is truth. Even highly compensated captains do commutes that are beyond absurd(like commuting in the J/S all night from hawaii to start a trip at 7am in SFO/LAX). There are some that even commute from Australia/Asia/Europe. The Feds can use FAR 117 as political theatre all they want but the fact that they use split duty(CDOs) is proof that they really don't care. You can still do 4 am shows EST when you are on western time.

They can make all the regulations they want but at the end of the day it is truly up to the pilot himself to make the call if he is fit for duty or not. Some pilots may be able to sleep just fine while commuting on a redeye and be fully rested. Some pilots may get to the outstation at noon and choose to stay up until midnight with a 5 am show and be dead tired. Some pilots may have a 9 am show in domicle but live 4 hours away in some small town with no airline service so they have to wake up at 4 am to get ready after going to bed at midnight.

You can not regulate all the possibilities and to be honest the old system was better IMO. Leave it to the individual to determine his fitness for duty. With these new rules you work more for less pay per day. If you limit reduced rest to once per trip and maybe account for hotel drive times it is a much better way to do things than this abortion of a law. You can't even pick up an extra out and back at the end of your trip now unless you have 10 hrs between them.

In an ideal world, that's how it would work. But I'm not so sure you FULLY understand that. You are aware of such things as the RLA, etc?

But getting past that, the concept ISN'T that dissimilar than when the legacies were in BK and trying to tell the pilots that they should "sack up and stop voting in concessionary contracts" would go. Here's how;

The legacy pilots could have done that. THEN management takes it to the BK judge, and more than likely it DOESN'T go in the pilot's favor.

At the regional level, they turn a crappy contract down, the scenarios are different depending on the circumstances. If they're wholly owned and under a sham BK, well, it's not that hard to see what will happen. If they're not wholly owned, they turn it down. Management says "OK", lets tell our mainline partners that we're no longer "cost competitive", see how that works out.

IOW, there's a THRID PARTY entity that's ACTUALLY the puppet master.

Sorry, but the concept of the regional provider TELLING the legacy how much the feed is going cost, as well as coming back and telling the legacy it's going to cost MORE just isn't the way this train wreck of an industry operates. And asking ALPA national to support such a notion would be viewed as ludicrous at best. Moak (the joke) has ALREADY deemed it so.

There are no PE's out of college. PE licensure requires a certain amount of experience after college prior to sitting for the licensing exams.

This is very true, and something I should have made more clear in my post by saying "starting wages for engineers" instead of "PEs".

Not unlike having AIA or LEED certification...

I'm glad someone else did the math on what I thought was needed some time ago, the seat costs needed to make flying for a regional reasonable-livable. That math came out to even less than I had originally came up with. Less than a dollar a seat per leg.

I also used to think of the tip jar by the door, after the after landing announcement of how much the pilots were paid for that leg around those thunderstorms.

But, after years of thinking about helping the poor regional pilots I realize they have done nothing to help themselves, nor, of course have their unions, nor, their mainline "brothers". So, who is going to help them? No one but themselves.

When friends seek out tickets to someplace and ask me for advice I now steer them away from any carrier that will have a portion of that flight on a regional flight, which I call the slave ship. These friends all want to buy ethically grown food, coffee, so they naturally think it's best to avoid such terrible labor practices? They are, as it turns out, quite happy taking a trip on Southwest or Jet Blue. Is this wrong of
me? Maybe, maybe not. The regional pilots are not helping themselves, so maybe some outside protection from themselves is in order.

Besides the less than a dollar per seat per leg pay rate that would lift the pilots into a livable specter, let's also agree that the low pay model, so far does not seem to be correlated with a decline in safety I say, so what? Is that what's it all about? No desire to save for your children's college? Not live in a crime ridden section of town? The ruthless business model is very true, but a deeper psychology stands behind it. hey have learned regional pilots will stand for it, and they exploit that. It's probably a laughing matter for them now, the bar is so low now that wages would have to double to make things halfway decent towards a livable professional wage. But someone forgot, somewhere, this is a professional level career with extremely high responsibilities. Instead, management laughs at regional pilots and seems to see no end in humiliating the pilots. So much so when I hear pilots say to themselves we knew what it was like when we got into it, so I guess there's nothing I or we can do - that it seems they welcome the abuse. Yea, you know the plane, are technically proficient, fly safe, do a good job, and yet, as far as your own self respect or the ability to support your family as it deserves, somehow that seems to be something worth discarding or not seriously considering. How would this feel for a pilot to hear their 5 year old ask their spouse why daddy is a loser?

Don't forget underplayed pilots are working for regionals. Which equals Many more legs a day on much more "dangerously" maintained aircraft. Simple math and probability proves it will be more unsafe than mainline flying less legs. Slap that onto the daily grind which yes I believe does cause a pilot to cut corners and safety without even knowing it. It's easy to say ya come in the night before to commute, its a choice but I'm going to take that early AM flight so I can be with my family on my day off

Agreed 100%