sailingfun

The RLA prevents collusion to fix pay or work rules amongst entities covered under its mandate. You can't even have a national union. That is why ALPA is a association and each airline is a individual union. In fact this is pretty much the whole point of the RLA. It was designed to prevent national railroad strikes.

HermannGraf

You have not been there long have you?
They are brilliant in making you believe they are fair. That is what they are good at. It is an extremely well managed company and a solid company but like any other place it has it share of problems. Always watch your back.

Note aside. Skywest claims to be the employer of choice and the best regional and as such should compensate their pilot group better than any other Regional. When places like Mesa, Great Lakes, GoJet, etc keeps operating year after year no matter what mistakes they make it show the real margins the Regionals work with. The gross margin is great the net margin and net result depends on operating cost and accounting tricks. Skywest is very well able to pay way more than they like people to believe. That is their business core and that is what they are good at, that is how they can expand, do bad, horrible deals like buying ExpressJet and keep operating and being solid. It is actually not a bad thing but keep that skills to the deals, like when buying airplanes or building hangars or negotiating with Delta. Don't use that skill with your pilots, pay them fair and fair when claiming to be the best is the highest, nothing else. An argument say, "we have to stay competetive". Well, I do not see any other among the competition that has grown more, made more money, bought more airplanes than Skywest. So I guess it means being able to grow and expand like nobody else.....well in that case yes, somebody has to pay and among them....the pilots.

amcnd

I would say SkyWest compisation is close to the top.. compairing a pure hourly rate doesn't prove anything... 2/3 the pilot group is not working today. Yet they are receiving holiday pay. You get that at your airline?? comparing W2, days off, benefits, company stability, bases, QOL, ect will show a lot more then complaining "That guy over there makes $2 more a hour them me... "....

RemoveB4Flight

I don't think you want to compare your W2 to someone at another regional with your similar date of hire and position. I'm going to guess Envoy, Endeavor, and now especially Air Wisconsin and possibly others would make you cringe when you see the difference.
Days off are all about the same regardless of where you go.
Benefits I would say we are somewhere in the middle. Air Wisconsins insurance beats the heck out of everyone else's. Any WO has better flight benefits than we do.
Stability- we are stable as of now, but as everyone is aware, in the regional world that can change in a heartbeat and in today's industry,there's no better way to lose that than fall behind on pilot compensation. Which is what is seems like might be happening. If we fall behind on compensation, we WILL have difficulty getting pilots in the door.
Company bases would be the thing Skywest can boast. We certainly have a lot of bases. However, once again, we all know how quickly that can change.

Duesenflieger

I would rather have a $20k yearly retention bonus than 4.12 hrs of holiday pay.... Right? We aren't as highly paid as you would like to believe.

SMACFUM

Ding! Ding! Ding! This guy gets it.

It's a blatant conflict of interest. But "shhhhhh" don't let the company kool-aid drinkers hear you. Unions are BAD!!!! rabble, rabble.

Groundpointfife

I think there is a disconnect in the information. What I have read is, there are 19,000 applications on file in 2017, 3000 of them are updated regularly.

tcco94

No. We are pretty near the bottom and our QOL might be better but it's not dramatically better than some of the decent regionals out there and FO's making $20k+ more a year. I mean just in another thread a year 1 Air Wisconsin FO making close to $90k??

Sure he probably works his a** off but even doing that here won't get you anywhere close to that.

Don't get me wrong we have a livable wage but we are not competitive at all on the pay scale. Even work rules with pay we really beat out only a couple airlines. Recruitment even telling new hires you can get your west coast base in under 6 months on any equipment? Good luck with that to those going to class. All these new hires going to be in for a rude awakening. Just like the 175 pilot in the other thread threatening to quit because he's off IOE and he's not in SEA or a line holder. Lol.

tcco94

Yeah and what's the minimum flight time requirement? If you look at the pilot credentials website to apply the "minimum qualifications" have no mention at all of flight time. Unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

TransWorld

Here is a compilation of what I have read on various forums:

1. A few years ago there were 10,000 - 13,000 (depending on who you believe) valid unique applications between all the majors. Obviously a lot of pilots had applications in at multiple majors.

2. Today American has 3,000 - 7,000 (depending on who you believe has current info) valid applications on file.

3. Today Southwest has 3,000 valid applications on file.

4. One person reported today Delta and United have MORE valid applications each than a few years ago (the often quoted 10,000 - 13,000 valid unique applications).

I have to suspect the data for Delta and United are old reports. Have to believe they would be more in line with American and Southwest. As much as we like to believe differently, there is not that much difference in the average set of RJ eyes wanting to grab the golden ring. Not enough difference to justify three or four times the number of valid applications at one major vs. another.

Of course, there are a total of about 18,000 non-lifer RJ pilots. I bet a lot of the FO don't have applications in yet. They will in a few years, but we no longer have a huge 'plugged up pipeline' with lots of 25 year experienced CA and 15 year experienced FO. There is movement, and it is going to pick up speed.

You can conclude what you want, but my bet is applications have dropped and will continue to drop over the next few years. Within 5 - 10 years the regionals will have shrunk and will look completely different from today. My guess is fewer 50 seaters. Fewer flights a day served by 70 seaters or larger. More of the 70 seater flying will be done by 100 seaters.

My crystal ball is more foggy on this last point. Some or a lot of the 100 seaters (and possibly some of the 70 seaters), will be flown directly by the majors.