Originally Posted by TheWeatherman

Wait, didn't ALPA tell their Regional pilots to shut up and color during the latest UA jumpseat war? So how do they have Regional pilots's best interest in mind again??

Originally Posted by NFGCDCTL

You mention higher staffing costs and the cost advantages of having a junior roster. What about the cost of training new pilots? At some point it has to be more cost effective to keep a pilot around for a while after you’ve invested in their training.
Does anyone know what that number is? How much is a pilot worth once they get signed off of IOE?

Originally Posted by stabapch

This is the 2nd trip I’m hearing the “YX is buying Compass” rumor again and apparently “BB is hinting at it but cannot legally release any information,” which apparently wont be until late summer in a press release....

Anyone else encounter this on the line?

Or is this just 2 CA’s that have nothing better to do than play the gullible game.

Originally Posted by pilotpilot84

I'm waiting for my Ground school class. I've been hearing this around town myself. Worries me, especially since I have offers from other carriers.

Originally Posted by Excargodog

Type ratings go anywhere from about $7K to possibly as much as $25K commercially:

Type Rating Cost

On the other hand, the difference between paying a ten year captain at Republic and a three year captain at Compass is about $27K a year. If you include 401k, it’s $30K a year.

Originally Posted by C37AFE

That type rating site is like a decade old with its info....

Originally Posted by Excargodog

Since the Delta flying is being done by Delta owned 175s they are now a sunk expense for Delta. Moreover, those particular aircraft are sort of specified as an exception in their scope clause since they were wholly owned first by Northwest and then with the Northwest-Delta merger by Delta. They were sort of an exception granted to the rest of the Delta scope agreement, IIRC. I think it is very possible the aircraft and the flying is sort of a package deal.


The advantages that Compass has of course is that they already have personnel in place and they are doing the job, as well as a training system in place to replace people lost to attrition. And of course, turning the aircraft over to someone else would require a complete inspection and have to be done in a phased manner in any event.



Their personnel costs are also lower than that of Republic, in part because their payscale is lower but to an even greater extent because the turnover of personnel as their senior people move on is so quick that almost everyone is relatively low on the already lower payscale. Currently an FO hired one year ago has not only been holding a line for seven or eight months at this point, they are bidding at about 35-40% as an FO in most domiciles while there are only a few captains actually pulling fifth year pay. So basically ALMOST EVERYONE is sort of at the low end of the payscale amd the average personnel costs for a Captain and an FO are $78 and $42 per hour for CPZ versus more like $92 and $51 for Republic with higher benefit costs for Republic as well.


None of that means that Republic couldn't take the flying, simply that they are at a competitive disadvantage economically at present in competing for that flying.



Assuming Delta wanted a change to happen, it certainly could. But the startup costs would be nontrivial and the delta (no pun intended) in personnel costs would also be non-trivial. And exactly what that would do to Delta's scope if it was decided to sell off the birds is something I think would have to be worked out between ALPA and Delta.



But if indeed the decision was to just get rid of the aircraft, I imagine it would be cheaper to simply have OO do the flying since they already have bases out West and already fly about 200 aircraft as Delta Connection and many of those startup costs could be avoided.

Originally Posted by ninerdriver

The estimate thrown around here is it would have cost 9E $50MM to start up a 170 program with CPZ planes, and that was a big factor in our change of growth plans at the end of last year. That cost considered that 9E already has blueprints for a 170 program on the shelf.

So, yeah, it's expensive to pick up and run.

Originally Posted by amcnd

Not to mention the cost of “conformance checks” and would they want the extended winglets, and new avionics chip to handle anything above Epic 25.2. A lot of cost and “down time”. I would suspect that nothing will be said tell after the summer flying. But watch out for that “hail marry” GoJet just pulled one off. Don’t underestimate the power of TSA holdings..