I promise you it is. I get calls on almost every off day I have. When they call, I don’t answer, but I look at open time and it is very obvious that they have staffing problems.
If you’re looking for printed proof from the company admitting that their delays are coming from lack of staffing, you won’t find that. They don’t like to admit it because lack of pilots gives us leverage (not that we do anything with leverage anyway #onepercent). But if you’re paying attention to open time, you can see the problems are plain as day.
And to make it worse, they are hidden. I can get a call from them asking to cover a trip. I look on open time, see the trip. Then at departure time when it still isn’t covered, it is either delayed further, or magically coded as a maintenance or weather cancelation. Weird huh?

Let me offer an analogy.
Let’s say I am working a 9-5 job and you are my boss.
On my way to work one morning I get a flat tire. Could be a quick tire change and be back on the road and get to work on time. However, I don’t carry a spare tire. So now I call you and tell you I can’t make it to work because I have a flat tire.
Was the problem really that I had a flat tire or that I don’t have a spare?
The company might code this as a flat tire issue. I would code this as a spare tire issue.

You can take my word for it. Staffing is SKW's biggest detriment to performance right now, PBS is giving out 100-hour lines and they still have minimal to no reserves in many places.

Do they have a long-term plan? But I sure hope they're being realistic about the fact that major hiring is just starting to warm up (and the military is going to have to stop their own bleeding soon...)

If they think their current MO is sustainable with additional big airplane orders and additional big major hiring, they're in for a big surprise.

The real question is how tolerant is the boss?

Right now the majors do not have to include the (pizz poor) operational performance of their regionals in their own on-time and completion numbers. So they are likely willing to cut the regionals some slack, because the alternative is to pay them more.

SKW for example will routinely "delay" a flight up to 24 hours or even more, flying it empty when they can finally find a crew just to avoid a cancellation on the board. Majors let them do it...

But that's changing in a couple years, the law is already passed, so majors will own the operational performance of their regionals, and have to report it as their own.

While we were understaffed worse in 2014, the remedy in 2018 wont be as easy as before.

Here comes a pay deal.

They are needing to pay up for dispatchers and mechanics too. Things in the regional world could get unstable very quickly.

Delaying flights that long a horrible practice and never should have been allowed. It’s not fair to crews who are then asked (sometimes tried to be forced) into working it on a day off. Even worse it’s not fair to the passengers. They don’t even get the hotel stay and meal vouchers for the inconvenience.
I’m very much in favor of combined performance.

Not sure what your asking?? These have already been announced..... typically they get dilevered a month bfore a in service date... just incase any delays. But looks like EMB is ahead of schedule..

The December Delta is not one of the SCs. It’s a straggler from the last order. None of the 30 new Deltas start coming until March. But you are correct, the first batch of Alaskas have begun. 3 are here with 2 more to come in Jan/Feb. And then another 10 later in 2018.

What law are you referring to? I missed that one. Can you provide a link?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/93156392

http://www.standard.net/Business/2016/10/20/Airline-on-time-rates-are-about-to-drop