I think the lifers are going to age out of the pilot group. Few of them actually WANTED to be lifers, simply getting trapped in the regionals by the lost decade and now so senior it actually doesn’t make sense either economically or QOL for them to start over again as the plug FO somewhere else. But when you have 50 year old CAs at the second tier (SWA, JetBlue, Alaska, Spirit, Frontier, etc) jumping to the Big Three, I can’t imagine anybody under that age is now ASPIRING to be a regional lifer, meaning the regional CA crunch will only worsen over time.

 

But there is a big elephant in the room!!! Imagine your child comes to you and says, I'm going spend four years in college, spend, at best, two years of additional training for a cost of about $90K and then get a job that pays, if I'm lucky, $40K a year for 10 years, until, again if I am lucky, I get called up to the Majors. During those 10 years, I'll work crappy hours, not be home on holidays and spend tons of time away from my family and my friends. What would you say? But 5 or 10 years ago, there were plenty of people willing to do this. Why? I have never understood this. For that amount of time and money invested, you could be a lawyer, an engineer, a PhD, a computer software developer, a CPA, who knows. So there is something about this job that from an economic standpoint doesn't make sense. To some extent, the pilots did it to themselves, when plenty of clearly intelligent, skilled folks are willing to work for peanuts, do you think the airline would say, no, I'll pay you more? The good thing is, now, there is much more demand so that there aren't enough people willing to work under those conditions to fill the demand. I have no sympathy for the regional airlines, but you can't say they were entirely at fault. There were plenty of folks standing in line to put up with that crap.

 

uhh because flying is fun? and those other careers arent?

 

I have friends that make as much in non-flying jobs, but when I’m off, I’m REALLY off, not on call, not working from or available to work from home. Even as a commuter, once I could hold a line, I got to more of my kids games, track meets, etc., and was free for more family social events I wanted to attend than any of those.

It’s a huge draw.

 

nailed it. Stay with company so it doesn’t collapse.

 

Indeed. As an old United captain once told me, "This is the best part-time job in the world"

He was working 9-12 days a month and making over half a million a year when he retired

 

If flying is fun, why does everyone complain so much about the regional airlines? It doesn't sound fun if you read many of the posts on the regional forums.

 

So are you saying the regionals really weren't that bad? Or do you now have enough seniority to avoid being treated like a mule?

 

Oh, the regionals have certainly gotten better (even mor so since I left), but let’s be honest about what they paid before the pilot shortage in comparison to the majors for basically doing the same job with far fewer benefits.

here is a blast from the past:

So 7 years for an upgrade, after which a CA over 7 was pulling in $60k? Four year FOs we’re getting maybe half of that. That wasn’t very good money even back then. And after two more years the CA would barely be competitive for a major. The average regional guy going to a major was 45 years old and had 10,000 hours.

 

In my experience, it's not so much about flying being "fun". The shine always wears off at some point. But there are pros and cons to it like every other job. A big pro to flying 121 is that your job duties are crystal clear relative to office work. For the most part, your duties are not as open to influence by the next big "cost savings measure"...you're still in charge of flying the plane from A to B. You're not going to be running the fuel truck and grabbing the coffee for passengers because some bean-counter got the not-so-novel idea to reduce staffing once again. To some people, the repetition in flying is tedious and boring. It all depends on what you value.