Maybe it should?

Why do airlines try so hard to hide outsourcing? Instead of liability, can we start with that? You would be hard-pressed to find an occasional traveler who doesn't know that the pilots up front are not Delta pilots. They would also be surprised to learn that there is no oversight of hiring, training, or checking at the contract carrier.

 

Dumbest and most ignorant sentence I've ever read here. But I'm new so...

 

I don't think a flow will solve the issues at DCI in general or PCL in particular. And its not just heartburn over a few guys that might not have degrees or that didn't get a certain score on some arbitrary test. But even a few known quantities on the front of something like this that would publicly curse the company and make a scene in uniform because they didn't get past the interview (possibly not even close either) is more than enough for any airline to say no way to a 100% seniority order flow. You want to blame someone for it, blame them.

Besides that though, with the amount of hiring we're seeing and going to see, any applicant with a good attitude and good (not perfect) record that networks and actively manages their career (more than just showing up to fly a schedule then going home and waiting for the phone to ring off the hook) will already have an excellent chance of getting hired somewhere better than most regionals. If they enacted a straight seniority order flow, that would slow/prevent as many pilots from going as it helped in any given year anyway.

You can point to the CPZ flow as one of the more successful ones, and you'd be right on the surface. They (for now) have a fairly good operation relatively speaking, and are one of the few that are able to staff it plus possibly some expansion. Much of that can be attributed to the flow. It keeps some people there for the flow and the attrition above them. But that model just doesn't scale to the entire industry.

The real issue with the regionals is they need to pay more and offer a higher QOL to attract and retain not only existing pilots but new ones to the industry. With very few exceptions, more than offset by examples to the contrary, regionals aren't expanding. So even flow though, if enacted industry wide, would just end up resulting in stovepipe stagnation to a significant extent. Once all the musical chairs are pulled (and there aren't that many left anyway) the only "growth" will be at the regionals trying to poach from one another with faster growth/upgrades/*gasp* under a year on reserve/etc.

And they still wouldn't solve the core issue: bottom end supply. IOW, new pilots into the industry. So far the legacies only plan has been to lobby for reduced minimums associated with extremely expensive "ivy league" aviation colleges, and that isn't going to cut it.

They need to address that it doesn't and never should cost 6 figures to get your ratings and none of them ever need to come in million dollar all glass trainers anyway. A4A's next step is going to be to lobby for even lower mins if time is coupled with "advanced simulators" etc which again does nothing to curtail the insanely high costs of degrees and flight training these days.

They need to partner with ALPA/CAPA and others to lobby for a new, better general aviation revitalization act. Enact better energy policies that rely on America long term rather than short term OPEC manipulation. Airlines need to invest in flight schools that emphasise mission oriented experience building in cheap round dial airplanes instead of completely unnecessary million dollar pistons. They need to screen and manage their regionals better. A cheaper bottom feeder RFP is no longer the clear winner. They need to continue and accelerte the trend of reducing the pilot/block hour size of regionals, and abandon their sick pathetic outdated MBA hack fantasies of endlessly growing airplanes there.

Flows can help here or there, but they are not some kind of universal solution and if applied across the board they cause almost as many problems as they solve, even if they do "work".

 

Oh really? So tell me, when was the last time Delta conducted an audit of Republic Air Holdings hiring, or their training department?

The only regional company I know of that has any oversight is Endeavor. Delta has access to all of the records of SSP applicants, not just standard PRIA. Delta knows every sick call down to the date and time it was called in, of an Endeavor candidate. That's what we signed up for when we approved the bankruptcy TA.

 

CPZ comes to mind. DL doesn't control or even over see the AF/KLM hiring process, or many, many others. And neither do any of the other legacies. So what is your point? Some trillion dollar liability in the event of a smoking hole somewhere? Guess what that's already happened and hasn't worked out like you prophesied.

This is even sillier than the time wasting argument about regional pilots that don't pass a legacy interview suddenly become some chart busting liability if something happens. Fake, non event issue.

 

Fair enough. I had thought it was possible that not only do majors save money by not employing guys to fly sub-100 seat aircraft (since it's cheaper to pay a regional to fly 99 seats or less than it is to have a Delta pilot do it), but also that they save money by shedding liability for a large part of the flying (~50% of flying outsourced).

I stand corrected.

 

Post of the year. By allowing us to fly their passengers around on airplanes they own, mainline has at least tacitly signed off on our ability to be their pilots. If we aren't good enough to fly a 737 on the mainline list, how is it that we are somehow good enough to fly an E-Jet or CRJ around that they own with their paying customers on board? It's an absurd double standard, since we are doing essentially the same job as a mainline narrow body pilot. Same speeds, same airspace, same airports, even the same routes in many cases. Glass cockpit, FMS, RVSM, autopilot, even auto throttles on some types. How is it that we are good enough to fly 76 customers at a time, but not 130?

 

Have to justify "luck" some way............palm it off as ability

 

That would only resonate with the righteous indignation of zero tolerance for #irony if, and only if, the decision to hire them was because they weren't a safe pilot.

There are plenty of other reasons to not hire a particulr employee at a particular company, even though the current company they work with is associated with the other company and they all interact with their customers.

What if one particular regional pilot happens to sick out over a lot of holidays when he was junior? Or he misses a lot of commutes? Or he has a lot of traffic violations? Or he just has a bad attitude? A mainline company would have no say over that, and as long as he was off probation at his current regional most likely neither would they.

OK so what if its because of a result in a knowledge test or a cog test, or even a psych test. Shirley that is the smoking gun for safety, right? Not even close. A knowledge test at that point is most likely used just to see how motivated someone is to work there. Did they care enough to study for that particular test? A psych test doesn't necessarily just weed out the mentally insane; it could just be to help give an idea of personality. He could be 100% safe, but a total tool to fly with. A cog test is merely one indicator for potential trainability. Not many regionals likely care if all their pilots can bounce around 10 different fleet types in the next 20 years, but a legacy might.

There is zero irony and no injustice whatsoever from airlines having their own interview process. Especially in the internet age when preparing for one has never been easier. Mainlines and their regionals are different companies. Heck even some regionals owned by other regionals are different companies, to the point where seniority isn't portable and if one pilot wants to work for the other one, they have to get past a different interview, no matter whose "passengers they're flying".

Funny thing is, most pilots get hired at most interviews. The success rate for those that prepare is usually very, very high. Squealing about the non existant cosmic irony of it all is just spinning your wheels while someone else behind you gets ahead of you.

 

I agree with all of the above, IF of course you manage to even get called for the interview in the first place. With thousands of regional drivers having their apps out and still waiting for a call so that they can even find out if they're mainline material, I think that's where a lot of the bitterness comes from. Bad attitude? Tool to fly with? How would they know if they don't interview them?