disillusioned

Somewhat agree. SkyWest and Compass are not making the profits that Delta and AA are right now. It's the majors feed, so they need to decide how important that feed is. I don't think the regional's can just raise pay since their costs are locked in. Can they pay more? Yes. Can they pay enough to make a HS senior want to go down the path of becoming a pilot? Probably not.

And everyone is all hung up on first year pay. Why would any regional up first year pay? That is the only thing they have holding people back from jumping ship from one regional to another. That is why they would rather do these signing bonuses. They can take them away at any point.

I don't see enough people coming down the pipeline to keep the regional's running and feed the major retirement numbers. I feel Delta is leading the game in getting their flying in house. And since United doesn't care about customers, they won't care how many flights are cancelled due to lack of pilots at the regional's.

skypilot35

I think this year is going to be interesting. Is there anyway to find out how many hours are flown for a given year?

Currently there are a little more than 3400 pilots. For simplicity:

1700 CAs / 1700 FOs

1700 x 1000 hrs = 1.7 million hours can be flown.

This should give us a ballpark number.

Obviously this does not account for training, vacation, military leave, sick time, golden days, etc. Just curious how many flight hours the company has averaged over the last 5 years?

NVUS

I couldn't find block hours broken into individual airlines, but here are the past four years of SkyWest, Inc. totals:

2014: 2,275,562
2013: 2,380,118
2012: 2,297,014
2011: 2,250,280

skypilot35

I'm missing something. 2,275,500 (hrs) / 1700 =1338 hrs per pilot per year. Even without 117 we had the 1000 hr per calendar year and we had less than 3400 pilots. Why's the math not working?

skypilot35

Thanks for the flight hours NVUS. Where'd you find them?

Just realized those totals are for Skywest,Inc. any chance of breaking out the numbers for Skywest / Expressjet?

NVUS

These are the combined block hours for SkyWest and ExpressJet. What is the breakdown from there? That data isn't readily available. I think you wouldn't be far off by just cutting the number in half. 1.1M or 1.2M block hours for 2014.

skypilot35

Got it. Thanks much.

M20EPilot

The systemwide RSR report has block hour info for SkyWest Airlines... look in your company email. The sky is not falling.

skypilot35

Is there a way to pull up historic RSR reports? I've deleted them.

I don't think the sky is falling but I do believe the months of having 14 days off are gone (in the regionals anyway). I think if the attrition rate continues we are going to have difficult time sustaining the current number of pilots on the roster, referral bonus or not.

I would imagine that over the next several months we will see AA/DAL/UAL management put some generous offers out to their pilots for a further relaxation of scope. I hope the mainline guys do not relent. I would also expect the retirement age to be increased to age 67; I don't believe it requires congressional approval to change. Two additional years is a bandaid, but it would provide the RAA with two years of lobbying time to get the ATP "adjusted".

I'm using the math (Total Flight Hours / Total Pilots) as a rough estimate. There has to be enough pilots on the roster to cover the contracted hours. I'm just trying to figure out what that magic number is going to be this year.

I think the number is about 2,750 pilots required to sustain operations at current level. Add a 10% buffer = 3025 pilots.

You are correct. The sky is not falling.....yet.

rickair7777

Operations don't feel very sustainable right now, with 3400 pilots. The buffer needs to account for management pilots, pilots in training, ground/sim instructors, sick time, mil leave, FMLA, and vacation. The average pilot as SKW probably takes three weeks/year vacay (some much more, new-hires much less).

I observed mesa lose about 50% of their pilot group in one year...attrition due to other airlines hiring led to junior manning, which led to more attrition which led to across-the-board vacation canx and more junior-manning, which led to even more attrition. Key factor was that, in addition to CA's going to majors, other "good" regionals were hiring mesa FO's.