Will the Regionals be around in 10 years?
 

I've heard a lot of pilots saying that in the next 5-10 years, the regional airlines will shrink and eventually go away. Do you believe this is true?

Lord willing...

I hope they won't be around.

Hopefully not

..........

20,000 mainline retirements in the next decade. That's more than the current number of regional pilots.

Something's gotta give.


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Doesn't that argument miss the fact that new pilots will be trained up during the next decade to replace current regional pilots? I get that perhaps not enough new pilots will be there to replace all the regional pilots that will be needed, but you can't just assume that regionals will disappear based on mainline retirements.

Yes, and they will still be underpaid.

Not only will they be around, but you can see exactly what the pay will be in 10 years, because of the glorious round of 10-year contracts with concessionary pay caps and miniscule raises that don't match inflation.
We live in a country of 350 million people. The major airlines will hire half from the military, which means they will need to hire about 80/month from the regionals. You don't think the regionals can find 80 young folks a month across this entire country that want to be airline pilots? They can. They could find them in a single ATP flight school.
This is all fine with ALPA, because they see themselves as advancing "the industry" and not pilots specifically. So they will continue to fail regional pilots on a massive scale and use them to subsidize senior lifestyles at the majors, which gives new pilots a dangling carrot to shoot for in 30 years.
Movement will be good throughout the industry (a good thing), until the next major stagnation event, regulatory change, or technological change.

Business works on money and incentive. The only way regional airlines will ever disappear is if the cost incentive that makes them so attractive to the Doug Parkers disappears, ie regional pay rises significantly to the point that outsourcing is not worth it. But right now the mainline/regional cost incentive differential isn't disappearing, it's exponentially growing. Is it really so hard to see that the next chip to fall is scope? One way or another, it will.

There will always be smaller destinations that the legacy airlines don't want to service...thus, there will always be regionals/commuters.

They may not be RJ-flying FFD outfits that outsource the bottom end of a lot of the flying that the majors used to do...but they will still exist in one form or another.

Regionals will have to adapt to the climate change and adjust their business models or they won't be around in ten years

There is not enough pilots in the training pipeline that would take the place of today's regional pilots. Maybe that could change in the future, but Millennials simply are not interested in the career. Today's millennial has different priorities when it comes to career expectations. This problem is not unique to just the airlines, corporations all over the country and trying to figure out just what it is that millennials want. It seems its more about lifestyle and 'making a difference' then money for them.

The most recent UND study of people entering the profession listed the top three concerns. They are focused on pay structure primarily. Their second focus was quality of life and how the employer treats their workers, and then came flow and career advancement programs. There were other criteria listed, but those were the dominant three per their study.

Your opinion is not supported by recent research in our field.


They aren't enering the profession because they want to go make a difference; they are chooing other professions because the cost/benefit to this profession is no longer there.

I think they will be a lot smaller than they are now. Between American, Alaska, Delta, United, Southwest, jetBlue, FedEx, and UPS, 37,250 pilots will retire between 2015-2029. They will also receive a lot of new aircraft between today and 2029, which means that between those airlines, they will be hiring nearly 40,000 pilots between 2015 and 2029. It's going to be interesting to see how the regionals react to this.

UND sends that poll out like literally every semester I was there. From Lovelace right? That data changes a lot and it's sent to everyone and not just people just shy of ATP mins but kids in 102 as well when they have no idea about anything in the industry. So much info from professors who haven't been in the industry for years is being passed along to them.

Source. Left UND this last spring.



Regionals won't completely disappear but I can see a pre 9/11 size industry. Short hops again, not these 2+ hours legs in a 200.

+1


There will always be a need for >50 seat airplanes (likely turbo props) serving small outstations. The mainline will not want to handle that flying in house. However, in 10 years I see a lot of the flying done by the CRJ-9s and E170s to be done back under the mainline certificate.

There are nowhere near enough new pilots entering the pipeline to meet the forecast attrition at the regionals. 10 years from now, all the current regional pilots will have had the opportunity to move to the majors. Some will chose to stay put, but 75% will have moved up.

Regionals will not go away unless mainline pilots make them go away. Airlines will simply have to fly bigger aircraft to deal with the pilot shortage. On top of that, airlines are working hard on making regionals future zero to hero programs. This is all okay with ALPA.

You are referring to students already in aviation, I am referring to corporate America in general and kids who are still making a decision on what they want to do with themselves.

A lot of you are missing the point. Just because there will always be a need for smaller airplanes and small city destinations does NOT mean there will be a need for a regional airline.

Instead of a contracted regional partner, the legacies can have RJs, turboprops, smaller airplanes in their own fleet. One interview, one career job.

That's the way I hope to see it go in the future. There will not be a need for a third party contracted feed.

Potato Chip,

For that to happen, the ALPA MECs will have to negotiate contracts with something like regional pay scales because there is little chance for operating RJs at mainline costs.

Mind you, I'd like to see it all on mainline, bu, face it, regionals are the replacement for the failed B scale experiment of the '89s.

GF

High mainline pay only exists because regional pilots are paid so low. Mainline pilots sold scope in exchange for high pay.

Really? Tell me again how pilots were poorly paid in the 60's, 70's and 80's.
Knowing history is your friend.

Scope was sold to keep the pensions going, oops!

Legacy carriers with wholly owned regionals will thrive. They will have a pipeline of people signing up with them because of their quick flow throughs in the near future. Maybe seniority numbers give out, if things get tight. New hire regional FOs will flow within 4 or 5 years due to retirement numbers. People will always go to a regional that has a quick flow through to a major. Envoy will be the first "place to go to" once things spool up. Majors without flow throughs will have a tough time attracting new hires for their regionals. Therefore affecting their regional reliability.

Ask a 23 year old 1,500 hour pilot where he wants to start at. They will pick a regional that has a quick flow or seniority number given out, over a quick upgrade at some other regional.

Have you heard of deregulation? Frank Lorenzo? Eastern?

Understanding how the entire airline industry's finances worked under regulation is key to this.

Of course. There were some hits in there no question. And many strikes in order to maintain that pay.

However, Pan Am, TWA, American, United pilots were paid handsomely without any real regionals.

Point is, regional pilots' low pay is not the reason mainline pilots get paid well. Saying that is ignorant.

Woo! Yeaaaa Envoy 15 year flow! Yea, no thanks. I'll take my chances at a place where I can upgrade in the next decade, and isn't shipping off aircraft to other regionals.

I would agree with you. Look at Southwest, for example.

It really makes little sense to pay all these regional management types, associated overheads with running a 2nd company, and having to interview twice thus twice the training cost and time spent getting bodies in a seat. Negotiate pay rates for "regional" size planes at mainline if pay is really that big of a deal and combine the two. They'd solve their pilot shortage instantly.

The inverse though is true. Regionals were created to offset the higher mainline labor expenses.

I totally agree! The time to act is now. Don't go to a regional without a SOLID FLOW and higher pay. Envoy is a start, those numbers will get better. What some people are not getting is that this side of the pilot industry has been surrpressed so long that this low pay, etc. is normal in the business world. It is not. A young person coming out of college should be looking at a 70k to 80k salery to start. This should be no different in the aviation industry. The pilot group as a whole is now a valuable commodity.
Let's all wake up and start demanding better lives for us and our familys!

That's got too be the most ignorant thing you've said on here, and that's saying something.


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Both regionals (pay too low) and legacies(pay too high) need to go away.

The LCC's should be the new standard. Not too high, not too low and sustainable business models. The international flying can be covered by Jet Blue, Spirit and the like with A330's, et al.

I like that joke,Ace Hotshot. :D

I fully agree with you on that point. I do recall that most are saying that pay is a major issue. Any idiot can easily see that the system is set up to keep all of us at the regional level.

I can't believe how stupid people are. That look at a few retirments and make the assumption that the airlines will gladly deplete their regional pilot ranks. Think of what that will cost them.

Flows are another misguided belief. Read the damn fine print.