Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve McCroskey
...But that will never happen unless the majors start going crazy trying to steal pilots from the other majors
Hey you never know... if it gets bad enough. But you're right, probably couldn't happen any time soon with the majors.
But I'm thinking if the regionals start going crazy and trying to steal pilots from other regionals. You are beginning to see that with the Trans States CQFO and the signing bonuses but that's just the beginning. Trans States and other airlines used to hire DECs back in the mid 90s when demand exceeded training capacity. Now demand is exceeding supply as well.
A lot of people say the regionals can't afford it but that's not true...unlike just about any other industry their margins are in fact dictated by their costs...there is no other way they could operate with such razor thin margins. The regionals exist at the beck and call of the majors but pretend to be operating independently under free market competition.
The majors can still save money on regionals even if the B scale (regional) wages go up significantly because they still get to reset those pilots to zero when they jump over to their seniority lists...(a 20 year captain at age 60 is far cheaper than a 20 year captain at age 50).
The other possibility is that regionals go away but the more I think about it the more I think it less likely even if wages went up significantly.
My whole argument is that there is no economic reason why regional pilots should get paid so little. People will tell you because the airlines can't afford to operate those smaller planes if they have to pay their pilots more but that's nonsense. Regional jets are highly efficient in certain markets and the profit margins are there. It's all about what mainline wants to do with these planes. The only reason regional pilots get paid so little is because of the lack of normal free market labor forces caused by the existence of seniority rules unofficially enforced by the majors and the "airline culture" that pilots cling to.