Why would SWA give a rats arse what chip wants? Professional courtesy??? Doubt it, they're having retention problems too.

To pressure mainline to not hire anyone with OO on their resume for the time being. The goal to keep guys from going to ULCCs if they have the goal of the big three.

Swa doesn’t care.

Not only does SWA not care, if they were smart they’d hire every single SkyWest pilot that applied. SkyWest is a huge weapon for the big 3 to use against SWA’s business model.

These are some very interesting times indeed. It’s almost like all these airlines except United can’t comprehend the truth. The only airline who’s at least attempting to adapt is United.

Looking at the rosters for the past few months, that might be exactly what SWA is trying. Each class is made up of at least 50% ex-SkyW pilots.

Wouldn’t that end up actually helping the lcc’s out with staffing though?

In the end it would be the demise of all the regionals that would help out the LCCs. Eventually, the career progression would be ATP to ULCC right seat, with the ULCCs paying enough and having good enough work rules to keep enough of a cadre of their CAs for a career while the new Either joined those or did their time and moved on to the Big Three/Four/ Six or whatever it is by then.

There certainly is not a huge amount of difference between flying a 76 seater CRJ and flying a 120 seater A220 or A319 s a FO, a matter more of product productivity rather than degree of difficulty. You still are generally one of the first two at the scene of any major foul up.

Hnestly over the last 22 years my friends at the ULLC’s have had better movement and stability then my friends at the Majors.. the only thing the Majors had was the lay and retirement. But the LLC’s have bridged that gap. And the retirement is about the same if you factor in the lost time do to furlough they had..

Actual demise of the regionals would help the LCCs because it would seriously impact the hub-n-spoke business model of the legacies.

Although the legacies could just bring it in house *on a temporary basis*... as long as they retain scope allowances for RJ's they can always outsource again next decade if the pilot shortage resolves. Unless somebody has a ratchet clause that prevents mainline RJ's from ever reverting to FFD.

Let the ULCCs have access to the gates in some of those “fortress hubs” and you’ll never be able to pry them back, what with possession being 9/10 of the law and all. But I think anything less than 76 seat flying is likely going to go away forever barring a workable electric small transport aircraft. Maybe even then.

It's not just OO...it's happening at 9E also. Previous if you got a cjo you couldn't start class until 9 months later. Now it's you're not even going to get an interview chance. And if you do leave for an LCC word is it's a year penalty before delta will even give you a chance look at your app.