$0.33 per passenger.
 

Quote: "Consumers should be concerned. Fares could rise as regional airlines are forced to raise pilots' pay. Aviation experts predict that some regional airlines may fail, which could lead to reduced service at smaller airports." Fortunes sour for regional airlines as majors prosper
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I think it's reasonable to say that with a $10/hour salary increase (across the board), airlines can stymie the pilot shortage and they would go a long way toward making regional airline pilot pay commensurate with the education, experience, and levels of professionalism and responsibility required for the position.

So let's do some math and see just how stingy, (and stupid) management actually is.

In a 50 seat airplane, (given an 80% load factor, or 40 passengers), an increase of $10/hour for each pilot equates to 50 CENTS per passenger, on a 1 hour flight. For a 2 hour leg,.....it's $1 per passenger.

On a 76 seat airplane, the numbers are even more inconsequential. Again, given an 80% load factor, (61 passengers), a $10/hour increase equates to less than 33 CENTS per passenger,.....or 65 CENTS on a two hour flight.

So if you believe the context of the above USA Today article, you would take away the idea that airfares will necessarily increase or service will be reduced at smaller airports and some airlines will FAIL,.......all over 33 CENTS!

I know they're stingy. But can they really be that stupid?

At least they're not under the impression that only the pilots onboard are the ones who need to get paid... your 50 cents per passenger is actually more like $5.00, once you pay all the crews standing by, taxes, contributions, etc. etc.

I gave YOU the math to support my assertion. Why don't you give me YOUR math to support YOUR assertion?

Let me caveat this with... 'Pilots should be paid better, and would be in a perfect world'

However... Your math is correct... IN a situation where a company only had to man one aircraft of two pilots and that was all that mattered.

BUT... How many total pilots does a company have compared to the number that are actually flying that day? On reserve, on vacation, sick, etc... In a vacuum it might be $.33, across a company it is much more. Add on top of that, tertiary things that you aren’t really thinking about like (hey I make more, I'm going to put more in my 401k. Which the company has to match).

Companies aren’t in a vacuum. A $10/hr raise for every pilot would have a much larger impact than you are thinking. Even if it were just a $10 supplement to actual flying (i.e. was paid for each hour flown, not on reserve or brought up to meet guarantee) it would still have all of the tertiary effects you aren't counting, just at a lesser rate.

Airlines have no problem raising prices to account for higher operating costs all around. They should have no issue raising prices across the board for higher pilot costs. Oh wait, we would need to stop having pilots selling their soul to operators for poor pay.

Until pilots as one group become a unified voice, I fear we will never get that simple raise that is needed in this industry. Look at several other careers and vocational trades that people can go into right out of school with starting pay that puts our industry to shame...

If airlines universally added $10 per ticket sold that would generate plenty of revenue to pay pilots better across the board. This would help so airlines could keep all their revenue they're making and not cut into it to pay pilots better....

Ok. So if it costs an airline $20 to increase pilot pay by $10, (which I think is a stretch), let's double my math.

The range now is from $0.66 per passenger per hour to $1.00 per passenger per hour. Still not a staggering amount from a $350 fare, is it? And certainly not too much to ask for, given the alternative failure of the airline, as suggested in the article.

Also I must add. Raising ticket prices would only help the airline whose name is painted on the side of the plane. Even if airlines increased airfare to supplement better pilot pay, the regionals are locked into contracts. The only way regional pilots could get that money into their pockets is for ALL regionals to not contract flying for less than they're worth... There has to be unity in this industry or it's not going to happen.

So basically the regionals have to force the mainline carriers to pay them more. Otherwise mainline will never be inclined to raise ticket prices to pay regional crews better.

Because you're an RJ driver who doesn't understand math.

You voted for Obama, didn't you?

Pilot pay is less than 1% of operating cost, but why would the airlines raise pay when pilot groups are taking pay cuts to get new aircraft. At some point pilots are really going to have to question their choices. I don't know about you all, but my time is worth a lot more than what we are paid.

Alright here is some extremely simple math with numbers to explain how easy it COULD be...

American Airlines alone flew roughly 100 million passengers in 2013. If you raised those 100 million tickets sold that year by $10, you have just generated 1 Billion dollars more in revenue for that year. Divide that out by a work force of 40,000 crews (include flight attendants, airline pilots, mechanics, etc.) That is a $25,000 a year raise for 40,000 crew members.

That 100 million passengers is how many passengers were carried on American metal. This doesn't include the 10s of millions carried on their regional feed.

I think it is easy to ascertain that raising pilot wages would not be difficult, and it would not really hurt the mainline companies at all. However, until pilots keep thinking short term and vote in concessionary and limiting contracts selling themselves short, a raise that everyone wants will never happen.

He** no... but I didn't vote for McSame or Rooney like you did.

Yet you still work for comedy pay.

That hypothetical $10 hike in fares, would lead to a decrease in PRASM. It really is that volatile. In a world where passengers will pick one airline over another to save literally a dollar, a $10 hike can take your ticket sale from being #1 on (insert travel website here) to #12 on the list.

There are very smart people (ya laugh all you want, but wrap your head around the complexity and fluidity) that have written very sophisticated algorithms that are constantly adjusting the price of a ticket for a given flight, for a given day, for given demand, second by second. A very minor flaw in one of those formulas cost our company (so they say) several hundred million in revenue in 2013. We still made a profit, but it would have been more. When they looked back at why we were so far behind they found the algorithm was a few minutes behind the competition in adjusting fares.

This. We really have to start looking at the big picture.

True, I totally understand that fluidity. You can't have just one carrier raise prices. It would have to be across the board. Therein lies some of the difficulties that some of the more bloated carriers with regionals struggle with over other airlines like Southwest which has a very streamlined product.

A duplication of many employee roles spread out among regional airlines makes it effectively more expensive overall, and the pilots are taking the big hit for that in order for a regional model to make sense to the mainlines.

Southwest (just using them as an example, I realize there are others...) has one set of dispatchers, crew schedulers, HR department, Training department, management, etc.

Now for each airline you need duplicates of all those things, and therein lies extra costs and inefficiencies. These costs need to be made up somehow. Either the regionals have to charge more for their services, or all the employees working there get paid less than they are worth.

Alright slick, i'll bite and try to explain it to you. Its not really math were talking about its taxes. When you increase an employees salary you also increase the taxes owed to the IRS, Medicaid, SS, and don't forget the 401K matching. Your "math" doesn't take into account any of these numbers. So, as a former math teacher I say you failed this little lesson.

I'm assuming you are an RJ driver who thinks he is underpaid and over worked. I'm in the same boat, but at the same time, no one held a gun to my head telling me I have to do this for as career. You can very well go do something else, work less amount of time and probably make more money if you wanted to, because, again, you have the free will. So it's hard for me to live off of first year FO pay, but I'm doing it because I want to, not because I have to. So suck it up and put on your big boy pants and go to work.

My point is simply this: US airlines could easily solve the issues of the pilot shortage and the embarrassingly low regional pilot pay, (which CAUSED the pilot shortage),...... IF they wanted to. And it wouldn't cost them a lot off of the top line or the bottom line.

To my way of thinking, it's closer to a rounding error than an additional cost. Yet apparently they would rather remain stingy and blame congress for the pilot shortage that they, themselves, have created.

So are you saying people should never strive to improve this career because we choose to do it?

At any job, any, people always want to be paid more. My strive to improve is to make it to the mainline and money will be there. Crying about how we can make $10 dollars more by increasing airfare that regionals have no control over the ticket prices gets us nowhere. So tell me, you think it will change because someone did a quick 2nd grader's math problem?

You can't have it both ways, the only way terms and conditions at the "regional level" will improve is when people say enough is enough and refuse to work for less than what a day laborer makes to fly a jet aircraft. The fact that you accepted employment at such a company says that your true feelings are that such pay is in fact acceptable... as you have accepted it.

Where is the shortage? which regional can't staff their flying because of this "pilot shortage", maybe Great Mistakes? And it's not like big poppy Delta is hurting for pilots while they are getting rid of the 50 seaters. That's the bottom line, not the regionals. And if you think they won't survive without the feeders, you might want to talk to a Comair or Envoy pilot.

Thank you! Those who think you can simply raise fares $.33 or even a couple dollars don't get it. If Delta could hike fares a couple dollars to make a few hundred million more per year, don't you think they would be doing that? It seems to come from the entitlement generation who always got a trophy no matter what place they came in.

Hey... it's not a whole generation, just a big part of it. Come in 18th, but get 1st for effort.

I do understand this rationale. Management does have a challenging job. What I am still trying to figure out is Delta taking back their regional flying. I just can't believe Delta would be happy paying pilots and I'm sure all other employees compensation packages worth 2-3 times current regional wages, while United and AA continue with very cheap RJ feed.

Remember that whole part about pilot salaries being less than 1%... that's how Delta (and all the majors) see it too. Farming out the regional flying was not originally about cheap labor, that was a by product. It stayed around because of the gaggle of people stampeding all over each other to get some coveted RJ time so they could end up at one of the majors.

Right, so pilot salaries are just a tiny speck of the bigger picture. So then why does management go to such great lengths to beat down regional wages, and is doing so right now? In fact Endeavor and Enovy got the take pay cuts or be Comaired threat. Oh, and by the way, mainline got pay raises. ???

There is no such thing as raising prices across the board. That's price gouging whether it was premeditated or not. However you are allowed to drop the price on a fare to match the competition. Hence we often see the same ticket prices for 4 different airlines. The airlines are obviously a cutthroat business. Majors would start services to a new city at a loss to gain market share and drive the smaller airlines to an unprofitable point and force them to pull out then raise the prices back up. I do believe the company's survival has to come first. This was true during the recent recession but come on, if you're making record profit now, throw us a bone will ya!

Probably because it's an entry level job and they have always been able to put butts in the seats. Supply and demand. When the supply runs out then the pay will go up. The supply has tightened and we are seeing carrots such as EtD. Regional FO pay will never be anything substantial due to the nature of the best of it being an entry level position and very easily attainable.

Now finish the rest of your thought and realize that majors are looking to consolidate their operations into reliable, fuel efficient aircraft, and represent their product themselves. Even the people who make the RJs are no longer planning on making aircraft of "regional" size.

Any coincidence Delta picked up a bunch of 717s?

10 years from now "regionals" will not exist the way they did in the past.

Delta doesn't pay regional wages. They pay a regional airline a fee for every departure. It's a fixed price, hence the low pay required for regionals to make a profit. They undercut each other to get the contract, then cut every corner to turn a profit on that fixed price.

Delta has come to the realization that replacing 5-7 RJ flights that are unreliable and hated by customers, with 2-3 full 717's is much more reliable and profitable. United is right behind, we're flying 737s and 320's into more and more places that were RJ legs, just with less frequency. We've also announced we're cutting 50 seat RJ capacity by almost 50%.

They're not stupid, not exactly, although airline managers on average are somewhat incompetent business people compared to other industries I've worked in.

But they are immensely self-serving, often self-destructively so...the Street encourages and rewards that, and modern America condones and accepts it as the natural course of things.

Not sure why the negativity. I was just throwing some ideas out there. If you read my discussion with others back and forth we went into detail about the realization of why we can't just bump ticket prices up $10 a pop. I was trying to throw an interesting angle in here. All these discussions we are having are interesting, and even if they're merely just silly ideas, it's an interesting discussion with room for improvement.

What's wrong with you people? This is one big circle jerk! Why would anyone pay a contractor more if there is always another contractor that will do it for less?

The really pathetic sad part of it all is most of the contractors that step all over each other's necks to win a bid belong to the same pathetic wanna-be union. It's not a union without unity and there is not a hint of unity in this business! ALPA is just another line item on the deduction side of my paycheck. We might as well each have our own in house unions. The results would be the same and we probably wouldn't even pay as much in dues.

What we all should be debating is why do we still allow ALPA to keep taking our money?

Fine... Double perdiem then. It's tax free.

$0.33 per passenger.
 

You're not factoring in that if they raise tickets by $5 per person, greedy execs are going to want $4.90 of it for their hefty bonuses.

This has all been thought of before. You are worth what you negotiate. In the case of the regionals, they are shrinking. There is not enough flying to go around. Management is using this as leverage to give the flying to the lowest bidder. In a few years, the regionals will face a pilot shortage. Unfortunately, the pilots doing the underbidding are signing long term contracts therefore there will be no negotiations when pilots have thr leverage. It's as simple as not taking a job at a regional if you want to make money. It's also as simple as not signing concessions. We did this to ourselves. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Regional pilots deserve to get paid as little as they do.

I don't think regionals did it to themselves. RLA limits our ability to strike. Majors slapped us by giving up scope along with ALPA and APA not enforcing all hiring from the regionals after scope was relaxed. (Yes there are many qualified military and non-military pilots but where would you say the true bottom of the industry is? Not at mainline.) Many pilots although qualified were/are allowed to cut in line and hired directly into mainline jobs which further stagnates career progression at the regionals. Then factor in 9-11, downsizing and age increase to 65. The system is most broken at the regional level and not much will ever change because the emphasis is at mainline.

OK, at some point I believe we have forgotten we live in a capitalistic society... Regional pay will not be much higher anytime soon. Why would it be? There are too many pilots willing to work for what the regionals are paying, because there is the hope of making it to mainline. It's simple economics. Most of the people on this forum (and hopefully me soon as well) are flying in the regionals and knew what the pay was before accepting the job offer. Why? Because mainline carriers pay a ton more!

No matter how many regionals vote NO, there will always be another carrier (even a new one) that will fly for these wages. To be perfectly honest, do you really think that the mainlines couldn't find a whole new set of pilots willing to work for $150k/year. Be serious... Its a losing proposition that started way before most of us even started thinking of flying commercially.

The bottom line is that there are 12,000 pilots willing to work for regional pay right now and there always will be as long as the mainlines are paying so much more. Regionals will never be unified and even if they were, it would be incentive for someone to establish a new regional with lower wages.

There is nothing wrong with making the regionals a career, but realize there is never going to be an incentive for the mainlines to pay more. The die is cast.

Regional airlines earn revenue from departure, completion, and block hour fees. The issue isn't raising ticket prices commensurate with staffing needs, most regionals simply don't have that option. Unfortunately, the winning RFP for passenger lift at most majors is dependent upon the contract carrier with the lowest bid.

You can attempt to hold the line all you want, but basic business and economic realities will generally hold that those contract carriers with the highest operating costs (of which labor is a substantial proportion) will lose out on a proportional amount of contract flying awarded. Until this paradigm is substantially altered at the major level, I don't think we'll see compensation substantially improved at regional airlines.

My personal opinion is that contract flying will be significantly reduced, if not eliminated entirely within the next decade.

Just my $0.02.