Raise pilot pay- an easy solution?
 

So say I'm a ceo of a regional, I go to church, wake up the next morning and decide that I want to increase first officer pay, make better commutable reserve or regular lines to help retain and recrute, is it as simple as calling HR and telling them to make it happen ?

Sure, why hasn't anyone thought of this before! Plant the money trees

In theory, yes. You're the HMFIC, right?!?

In reality, no.

As CEO, you'd have to ask yourself: "How can I pay for this?" Because everything has an associated cost - is the cost of these changes less than the cost of inaction?

Biggest issue right now IMO isn't that regionals don't want to pay the compensation required by the labor supply/demand curve...its that they *can't* due to fixed fee capacity lift agreements that have increasingly been squeezed by their mainline partners, drastically lowering margins.

For example, changes to scheduling will likely mean more pilots required...increasing costs beyond simply higher payrates.

In short, majors don't want to pay a penny more to their regional partners for more reliable regional lift...and have to face the economic consequences of that via operational issues with their contracted lift.

"The high cost of low overhead", and all that.

Which comes back to the cost of action v. inaction.

To say nothing of getting buy-in from the Board of Directors and ownership...

So, you want to be a CEO? Okay, I want to be an investor.

Mr CEO, you know we have a fixed revenue stream. Why have you given away my profits to your pilots? We will now have smaller year over year profits. What are we going to tell our investors and creditors? That we wanted to be nice?

Some (SKW) have publicly stated they'll go out of business before they'll raise pilot pay to attract and retain enough pilots. That could just be rhetoric but I suspect they mean it because the problem is quite serious. Their basic business model is predicated on an endless supply of cheap labor to keep things moving. That means they really can't do business without a ton of cheap pilots and the cost of redesigning things is so high that it is not practical in the market segment where they are forced to compete. This dependence on endless cheap labor is common in the regional airline industry and it is a serious problem much like fuel hikes and recessions of the past.

Mr. Stakeholder, we can accept a lower margin to recruit and retain the manpower necessary to operate this company, or we can maintain the higher margin and cease to be a going concern once our contracts are revoked due to poor performance due to lack of pilots.

Which is a better use of your capital?

If you would prefer us returning pennies on your dollar following the 1113 process, that certainly is something we can look at.

You are asking all the wrong questions. For all pilots sake you better hope and pray working conditions and pay do NOT improve at the regionals. It's the only way to see their demise and have the flying reabsorbed into their parent airlines.

You guys are probably too young and inexperienced to know the ramifications of what you are proposing. This entire model and way of life needs to cease in their existence.

In summary, conditions and pay need to stay right where they are if we are to successfully see this model collapse in on itself which realistically may be around the short corner provided Congress doesn't cave in and redirect the FAA's energies into re-examining the hour rules.

What the %$! does going to church have to do with it? Are you stealing from the offering plate?

He found Jesus.

LMAO
Maybe you have to be a hardcore atheist to find this funny as %^$!