Let's be honest here, does anybody actually think the regionals are going to raise pay? Only money these clowns are paying out now is the fancy signing bonuses to get people in the door and suck them in like the rest of us. I hope I am wrong.... The regional business model needs to finally fail and it's time for the tides to turn in favor of us pilots. Fly safe!

 

I watched the video from the congressional hearing, (and by the way, Sully was absolutely brilliant), and it occurred to me that NO ONE asked the most important question: "WHY?"

WHY,.......... does that RAA, (and the cowardly regional airline executives hiding behind it) want congress believe that some kind of "structured educational requirement" would serve the nation's airline passengers better than requiring all airline pilots to have Airline Transport Pilot licenses? WHY???

Would anyone care to take a guess? WHY would the RAA (doing the bidding of regional airline management) want to see the 1500 hour/A.T.P. requirement replaced with some kind of heretofore undeveloped, untested, unrecognized "structural educational requirement"?

 

For those who are in contract negotiations, the signing bonus' are a violation of the "status quo". For those with a contract it is a violation of the contract unless the contract allows such compensation. People have tried to argue with me that the airlines are making the bonus offers before the pilot starts and therefore the contract does not apply. That is BS, there is nothing in any of the contracts that allow a company to pay certain pilots outside of the contract. Additionally, every contract has an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing and using such a tactic to get around the contract would violate that.

I don't know why the unions don't want to push this issue. They need to simply file in court for an injunction to stop the companies from making these outside deals. If their lawyers are telling them that the companies can do this they need to get competent lawyers. I suspect the unions merely think its in their best interests.

 

There are more than enough pilots out there with 1500 hrs to fill the empty seats.. but the pilots who will accept that low pay is different. So the argument is not if there is enough pilots and they should lower the requirements.. the argument should be about paying a qualified pilot a suitable wage.

 

I think the problem is more complex than just Pay. At least in terms of restoring the pipeline.
Ms. Black mentioned how EAS contracts are being won by 135 carriers nowadays.

Rather than regulation to reduce ATP mins further, why not lift the 9 seat cap on 135 commuter and raise it to like 19 or 25 seats. They could use 2 pilot aircraft/fly under IFR, and hire FO's with commercial/multi creating a "seamless" pipeline from flight school to ATP once again. The 135 carriers could greatly increase capacity.
It's probably not economically feasible to fly these routes with just 9 seats in most cases unless EAS subsidized. The other problem is there are no aircraft in development in this category.
CAPE Air alone cannot produce the FO's the 121 carriers need.

From what I've seen, most graduates aren't taking crop dusting jobs, no, but the part 91 flying has diminished greatly, as evidenced the AOPA president's testimony. Part 135 is mostly single pilot as it stands. So you do have a gap (from 250-700 or so). This I believe does influence career decision making at the very outset.
Everyone says get a CFI but it is an additional expense that people don't always have. As a side note, I believe the CFI mins should be something like 500 hours anyways.

Many people on here want the regional model to implode but its such a haphazard way of solving the issue.

 

There are all sorts of facets to the puzzle but essentially if first year regional pay was 40k, second year 60k, and captains topped at 130k with decent work rules, and some soft pay, open time, overrides for the ambitious, the "problem" would be over. Speaking as a bench sitter, that would work for me. It seems as if regional management has the "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" mentality.

 

Ms Black's entire testimony was a talk about apples and oranges. She tried to persuade the committee into thinking that the new regulations are making things less safe calling things the "unintended consequences" of the regulations.

She said that the regionals are now having to do a lot more training because the pilots are no longer coming from aviation schools directly, they are having to go to non commercial aviation jobs to earn hours and that is causing them to need to be "retrained". The retraining means more hours of training. Not the case. In the past all of the new hires were not low time guys. A new class would have a lot of pilots from Comair, Midwest Express, and other defunct airlines. There were also a lot of pilots going from American Eagle to other carriers for quicker upgrades. They all had a lot of experience. Now the classes are mainly new pilots to aviation. They take the same training or less than the ones of the past coming out of aviation schools with 210 hours. So yes, on the average a class takes more hours to train but if you are comparing new pilot to aviation to new pilot to aviation they required training is far less. The 1500 pilot does much better than the 210 hour pilot. Every pilot with 3000 will tell you that he was a safer pilot with 1500 hours than with 210.

 

The only comments that matter in the article are Chuck Schumers. The ATP bill was his baby, and as long as he is the second (soon to be the most once Harry Reid leaves) most powerful Democrat in the Senate, and the Democrats have 40 votes this isn't going anywhere.

Unless Schumer changes his mind, leaves the Senate, or Republicans get a filibuster proof majority you can forget any changes to this law.

 

It is because they believe they can get around paying higher wages if it is lowered. Regionals are throwing every idea against the wall to avoid permanent pay raises. Sooner or later they will get around to permanent pay increases because that is the only way to attract more people to this profession.

 

Higher requirements didn't stop banks from making flight loans, lower requirements won't cause banks to make loans.
Still the fiddling is ridiculous.