Ozymandias

Just throwing this out there. The ACMI's (ABX, ATI, Omni, Atlas, Kalitta, etc.) all have FO's pulling in over 200k their second year if they want to work. And a heavy type rating might look better than upgrading to Captain for several legacies.

Excargodog

????

A LOT of regional airlines would LOVE DEC applicants. They just can’t get enough of them to offset CA losses to the majors.

Air Wis:

JohnBurke

None of which is relevant here.

In the military you don't make money for the unit. You consume it. An civil F/O who doesn't upgrade is still an asset. The airline will always need F/O's. That need will not diminish. An F/O who isn't going to become a captain doesn't cost the company more; perhaps compared to a new hire, with time and longevity, the senior F/O will cost more than the new hire, but that too, is irrelevant. The senior F/O still costs less than a captain of equal seniority or longevity; both fill vital roles, and the pay structure is meted out accordingly.

In the airline structure, the F/O will undergo the same training every period, be it ongoing, or with recurrent and proficiency training, regardless; his continuing as an F/O doesn't increase the training cost to the airline. If the airline gets rid of him however, it does increase its training costs substantially; both the recruitment, hire, and training of a replacement, and the extended period to fill that lost seat...which can be eight months in some places due to the backlog in the training program. Far less expensive to keep the F/O who doesn't upgrade, yet continues to do his job.

It's not a combat unit. You're not sending the F/O to war. Whether the F/O isn't ready to be a captain, or doesn't want to be a captain, that FACT doesn't detract from the companies operation, nor does it increase their costs. The airline isn't the military. The airline produces the revenue that allows the military to operate. Your commentary wasn't facts, and calling them such doesn't make it so. Your statement was incorrect, and your response is more so, and irrelevant.

You posited the interrogative, "If a thousand hours isn’t enough time for them to get ready for upgrade, perhaps they are in the wrong business?" and called it a "fact." It is not.

You opined, "But seriously, with the majors hiring away CAs at the current rate, eligible people NEED to upgrade. Otherwise they are just soaking up SIC hours other FOs need to upgrade." It is neither "fact" that eligible people need to upgrade, nor "fact" that a first officer who does not upgrade is some how diminishing another employee. These may be your opinion, but are hardly "facts." A new hire does not have a right to the hours flown by a more senior F/O, nor does he have a right to upgrade; it is a privilege accorded those who are able, and who choose to do so. Every operator has those who cannot upgrade, and not everyone is ready at the same time. That is a fact. A F/O who is not ready to upgrade should not accept an upgrade, even if "junior manned" or called to do it without his or her application, and whether he continues to fly as an F/O or not, he is not stealing or "soaking" hours from others. He's working. Get over it.

You stated, "Nobody can fly with just two FOs in the cockpit. If there isn’t a CA in the cockpit, the plane just sits there." as if this has anything to do with the price of tea in china. An airplane can't fly without fuel in the tanks. Or funding. Or nitrogen in the tires, and so on, and so on. So what? Many cockpits fly with more than one F/O on the crew; a single captain and three F/O's, for example, for long distance flying. An F/O who does not upgrade, or chooses to upgrade later, or who is not ready, does not make "two F/O's in the cockpit. That F/O will be assigned F/O duties, as always. Nothing has changed. The company will have ample who wish to upgrade. Some will try and not be ready. Others may be ready but lack the experience, and will get it, but regardless, a captain will fill the captain slot. A F/O will fill the F/O slot. The company will not put two F/O's on board with no captain, obviously; it's a stupid, ridiculous assertion or analogy, or statement to make, but thank you, Major Obvious.

You stated, "And the US is running out of people qualified and willing to be DECs." and you call this a "fact." This is also untrue. The closest that might be said would be that there are fewer who are qualified, who are willing to work for a regional airline under regional wage and working conditions. This doesn't mean that there is a shortage of those who could, but rather it means that the airlines who might offer those direct-entry captain positions lack the ability to attract and retain those qualified to be direct entry captains. The regional world is not, and always has been, an entry level world.

You might as well opine that the "lifers" who sit at the top of the seniority list and never leave their entry level operation, are at fault for "soaking up" flying time that junior captains might get, or for operating in their position at a higher wage, and might even suggest they should move on and leave the regional seat for other up-and-comers. Neither the senior captain who remains, nor the senior F/O who upgrades, is in the wrong: both are performing a job they were hired to do. Whether the captain entered directly or worked his way into that seat is largely irrelevant; he's doing his job. The F/O is doing his job. You see the common thread, or theme? The notion that someone needs to get out of the way to make room for the curtain climbers that follow is like the idiocy that surrounds the age 60/65/67 arguments and when the drivel is filtered, is enunciated quite clearly as the voice of entitlement, "get out of my way old man, I want your job." The problem is that the up-and-comer isn't entitled to the senior F/O's job, or the captain's job.

You stated, "If you can’t grow your own CAs the organization can only contract." and call this too, fact, yet it is neither true, nor fact (both concepts not necessarily synonymous or mutually exclusive). There are organizations that do little upgrading and don't contract, but that's largely irrelevant in the setting of this talk. Airlines have amble curtain climbers who would love to upgrade. The training pipeline at nearly every level in the industry is backed up, with simulators running at capacity, line check airmen stretched thin, OE and consolidation going gangbusters, etc, and it's not exclusive to regionals, ACMI, majors, or even legacy carriers. Coming from the pandemic era and a change in tempo that's left every training department reeling, with reduced entry level training through reduced operations globally, the flux vs. demand will take some time to iron out. The calls of falling skies and the chicken-little impersonators doing their best to stir the masses with their school-girl screaming about shortages and needs to upgrade and lack of available candidates are echoes of the lies of Kit Darby, which just don't seem to die.

Over recent years, I've encountered two F/O's who couldn't read latitude or longitude, nor find it on a chart, some who who couldn't recognize other aircraft types, a captain who (I kid not) believed that Part 135 applied to him (widebody, international), and a host of other appalling dearths of understanding, none of whom were confined to even entry level jobs. To suggest that a new first officer in his first job, with one thousand hours of flight time in the right seat, is automatically prepared for upgrade, is utterly ridiculous, every bit as much as suggesting his failure to upgrade at a thousand hours in the right seat is somehow a detriment to the company or to junior first officers. No, your comments are not fact; they are opinion, but not necessarily correct opinion.

rickair7777

Their business model cannot sustain the economic outlay required to keep people long term in this climate.

I'm not even certain they can sustain $200+/hour, they may just be doing that in hopes of keeping the regional model on life support for better days, when pilots are a dime a dozen again. The big boys will be willing to subsidize regional ops at a loss for some period of time, simply to retain their feed network but at some point they have to fish or cut bait. In the old days there were regional lifers who claimed that regional feed should operate at a loss, and the majors would make it up on mainline ticket sales. I recall LUSA actually providing free regional rides to the hubs about 20 years ago, ie buy a ticket IAD-LAX and there was no charge for BGR-IAD leg. That's a very questionable biz model though, I lost track of how many times LUSA went BK.

And even if you made everything equal to the legacies (which would require MORE than legacy pay to make up for crap regional schedules) a regional is still a subcontractor with uncertain long-term prospects.

hercretired

excellent post, well written and great explanation.

Excargodog

unlike your opinion - disproved above - “given that few locations allow or have a mechanism for a direct entry captain.”

But it’s still mathematics. If the regional is losing CAs faster than they can hire DECs or upgrade FOs, the flying can only contract once existing CAs are flying their maximum allowable hours. And as they contract, even fewer FOs will become upgrade eligible - and fewer still if FOs who are already upgrade eligible consume SIC hours that might have gone to others to become upgrade eligible. That isn’t opinion, just basic theory of constraints mathematics.

WheelInTheBack

While your math may be correct (I don’t really care enough to calculate it out and see if it is), my response was in your statement that FOs who don’t feel ready to upgrade at 1000 hours should find another career. While my flying skills are just fine and probably in some areas well above average, I don’t think my experience as a CFI would have made me any more ready taking on the captain role at 1000 hours. Maybe it would have. I don’t really know. I’m sure as I got closer to upgrade eligibility I would have focused in more on some of the things I’m maybe not as polished on. I probably still would have held off a little bit until fully feeling ready and I don’t blame others for doing the same. Perhaps demonstrating even more need to try to retain the employees is that I bailed before hitting 1000 hours though, and probably won’t be able to upgrade at my current company until well above 1000 hours. I’m ok with it.

Excargodog

Nobody asked you to take on a 121 CA role at 1000 hours of CFI time, it wouldn’t even be legal. But lots of people have upgraded after 1000 hours of 121 time. If you have been flying 121 SIC for a year and a half - which is about what it’ll take to get to 1000 hours these days assuming your airline has an adequate supply of CAs - you have had 1000 hours of opportunities to pick your various CAs brains, to use them as a role model (good or bad) for learning how it’s done and deciding how you want to do it, not to mention probably four or five hundred nights in a company paid hotel room where you could have been studying the FOM and honing your knowledge.

But seriously, going to another job as an FO and getting a different type - especially in a heavier aircraft - will move your career along too, although if you are afraid of unspotlessing your PRIA (the topic of the thread) that’s probably as much work as or more than prepping for CA. But there are many paths to success in aviation, not just one.

Like I said, it isn’t punitive, it’s just math. An outfit with 100 CAs is only gonna fly 100,000 hours a year max, it doesn’t matter how many hundreds of FOs they might have. And similarly, the FOs collectively are only going to get those 100,000 hours of SIC time to divide among them. It’s a zero sum game.

JohnnyBekkestad

I really don’t understand why you are afraid of your PRIA. CA upgrade at SkyWest is probably the easiest training event you’ll ever do. They babysit you and son feed you. I initially upgrade on the CRJ and then transitioned to the ERJ at SkyWest and the training was really good.

NickC5FE

EXACTLY. Glad someone said it. The Military FEB process is for weeding out those that fail to command, anything both in the cockpit and out. Your job in AF aviation is to upgrade, and command. Having been a member of FEB boards, the people that don’t want to be in their profession are usually the ones that end up there….

There are plenty of FOs that stay FOs because they have other life goals, and they like having a great schedule.

Junior manning upgrades is just an almost perfect way to watch your FO numbers go through the floor as well..

Just my .02