except a year on they’ll make 737 captain pay and blow the Skywest lifer out of the water.

 

Maybe these higher rates work - how much of the cost pie is pilot labor? If pilot labor doubles but is only 5% of the total cost....

It may still be cheaper to put a 76 seater on a route with expensive regional pilots than a half empty -700 with the same paid pilots.

 

At this point, the only reason a mainline aircraft isn’t on every route is because there aren’t enough of them. I haven’t flown in an airplane in nearly a year that wasn’t full or close to it. There are obviously BFE exceptions out there that an RJ will be needed, but that seems to be vastly the exception to the rule at the moment.

 

If you think pilot labor is only 5% paying $200 an hr on a 76 seater you need to do some research.

 

Wait how cheap do you think the hourly operating cost of a 76 seater is? I’m gonna guess pilots are comfortably less than 5% of total hourly cost.

 

76 X $200 a ticket for let’s say an hour flight = $15,200. Let’s say $100 an hour Fo and $200 Ca = 2%. It gets weird with longer legs, first class tickets, Lease, Mx fees, FA pay, oversold ticket,and what ever else. $300 /15k = 1.9%

 

Way more then 5% of overall costs. You pay somebody $200 then you match for taxes, benefits , etc.

 

You aren't getting anywhere near $200 a ticket. Think about what UAL takes, taxes, etc.

 

it was a hypothetical, Einstein. My point was totally lost on you.

Do you think the cost difference between a full 76er and a half empty -700 is less than the $100/hr regional wage jump?

 

Put another way, those regional pilot pay raises increased ticket costs about $2 per passenger, per flight. Divide $2 by the average ticket price to see how much of a total impact it was.

I checked the Google Flight prices of one-way tickets for some regional routes and the majority are about $200. If your travel is super flexible, you might be able to get some <$100 one way tickets, but that's the exception, not the norm. Flying out of your local, small town airport has a convenience fee that is significantly higher than the highly competitive hub-to-hub markets that have been competed down to razor thin margins. I lived in podunk military towns and routinely drove 4+ hours to a hub to fly anywhere because I couldn't afford the convenience fee that tripled my plane ticket cost if I flew from my local airport.

I think the regionals have not been the razor thin operation everyone has been led to believe and wages were so low because, well, people were willing to work under those conditions. Now, most regional pilots can do basic math and see that the pay raises and bonuses for staying at a regional come at a heavy cost of seniority at a career destination, so legacy management is trying to figure out if it's worth increasing ticket costs (or letting the costs eat into profit) $2,3,maybe $5, to keep the model alive, at least until they can work out the logistics of an alternative.

Realistically, it's likely in the near future it'll be normal for 1,500 hour pilots to go straight to the legacies, skipping the regionals altogether, so I think the legacies are going to have to take some notes from the regionals and be prepared to train pilots with varied backgrounds who've never flown jets before. Also, I've never flown with an FO who was an idiot, but I've flown with quite a few low-time FOs who didn't know what they didn't know and spooked me. So, brace yourselves.