Originally Posted by Allegheny

I am not int the regional industry and so I am not up on all the details of that segment of the industry. I went to the Silver Airlines site and wikepedia and found that Silver received over 20 million in essential service fees. They are also receive fee for departure income from code sharing with United an other carriers. Isn't that enough income to keep the company solvent? Or is it simply a matter of not being able to staff the airline with pilots?

As for Great Lakes, their web site states the following:

Attention Future Airline Crew-members:
Great Lakes Airlines is pleased to announce on March 18, 2014, the FAA approved our FAR 135 Operation Specifications addition to our current FAR 121 Certificate. To clarify, Great Lakes Airlines does not have a separate “135 Certificate”, but an allowance through our Operations Specifications to conduct scheduled airline operations under our current 121 Certificate allowances using the Beech 1900D fleet.
This new undertaking allows us to hire First Officers meeting FAR 135 qualifications. They will gain the flight time and experience required for the Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) or Restricted-ATP (R-ATP) certification requirements. Once they meet these requirements they will then have the ability to start building the required time to upgrade to a 121 Captain.



I guess this is the condition that they keep the aircraft to 9 pax or less? Is that correct? With the income from essential air service, guaranteed, and allowing for low time pilots I don't see why they would not be able to staff. Are they that bad to their people?


Again sorry if I seem out of it but from a basic business standpoint this doesn't make sense.