Profits are good! 2014 by all accounts should be a great year for mainline carriers, despite the fact many are poorly run and some of the employee groups are terrible. Regionals undercutting each other by paying poverty wages because young people want to make flying a career is bad! This hopefully is coming to an end soon, not out of the goodness of managements hearts, but due to factors they cannot control. Trust me, if no one wanted to play baseball anymore because they might have to spend time in the minors making squat, the pay would go up and they would travel by airplane instead of a bus. Air travel demand is forecast to grow consistently in the near future. Hopefully some of the other speculation on these boards turns out to be true also.

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/...Highlights.pdf

 

Fixed it for ya!

 

Are you trying to beat pilots down with this statement? Are you worried about your stock at OO? A good labor man always flips it around, let me try.


What’s the value of owning the competition? Ahem, option B could be: OO sells EV, they go to bankruptcy and come out with a contract worse the 9E and under bid OO on their current or future flying.


Why would OO want to compete with recent bankrupted airlines that have an advantage in bidding for work? There biggest regret is probably not waiting for Pinnacle to bust and scooping them up for a deal.


Also SkyWest can deduct the losses of EV from OO gains and pay less corporate Income taxes while simultaneously building the company’s contracts, removing smaller less profitable planes, and sell it for a profit. That’s called Capital gains tax much cheaper than income tax.


Plenty of companies own stores or sites that “lose” money because it’s cheaper the letting the competition set up shop.

 

I feel as though you misunderstood what I wrote. I am not supporting any “divide and conquer”. It was a response to an earlier post about an FO making $22 dollars an hour already being on a linier graph with mainline pay scales, and I pointed out that 10 year crj9 captain pay is not.

 

My eyes were opened to this when I was on a flight from ASE-IAH. It was over two hours in a CRJ700. There is no reason majors can't bring flying back into the fold if AS is doing these kinds of legs. One 737/A320 can replace two "big RJs."

Also, how is Horizon being affected by the "regional" pilot drain?

 

You completely missed the point. What you have pointed out is the type of flying that will stick around. Just look at the flights that Delta cut from MEM and UAL is dropping from CLE. Even today Silver announced it is cutting back its EAS cities it serves from ATL. This is all capacity that is being cut and not replaced.

 

I completely agree.

Horizon has had it's ups and downs with their pilot staffing. Our attrition has steadily increased, and the current rate is about 3 pilots per week. There have been times when they've had to cancel flights due to staffing. Premium pay has gone from 150% to 200% when they're really struggling, and it seems like it's here to stay at that level. There are open trips paid at 200% pretty much any time you want them. We've been hiring consistently since last summer, and that's going to continue. They've been hiring an interesting mix of people, which I think has caused them some problems with retention. For example, quite a few military people have gotten on here recently. I spoke with one who was hired here, finished IOE, and then left 2 weeks later for US Air. He was a C-17 guy. You can hire all of the well-qualified people you want, but that doesn't mean they'll stay. Since last summer the upgrade time has gone from 13 years to 10.

Just because a few small cities that haven't been making money are among the first to go doesn't mean that all small cities will go, or that RJ flying between hubs is stable. Correlation =/= causation and all that. Some small communities can support air travel, and they will continue to have it. The least profitable will be at risk.

 

to digress further, spoke with a long time friend whose daughter just started an entry level job with a BS for 57K with unbelievable bennies.
Folks, people think the compensation here is comparable to an after school job bagging groceries.
Well, you're not going to get the bucks until you demand it. Not only that, but those that are leaving you in the dust in terms of compensation will one day drive prices even higher in the market place for housing, automobiles and every other venue. Their ability to pay will escalate prices so that you remain in relative poverty.

 

This is the best post I've read in a while. Just because 35-40k is "livable" for one person, that doesn't mean it's a competitive wage for professional talent in this country. If you want to really fix your supply issue, pay like engineering jobs. 65-80k + bennies. To start.

 

Jazz does IAH-YYC, Mesaba (R.I.P.) did DTW-SLC on CRJ-900's Nothing like 4+ hours in one of these torture devices, at least it's not on a 200.