David Puddy

Flew on one of your E175s recently and was very impressed. Had a good chat up front with the crew. They seemed happy with the ERJ.

For those of you who fly it, what are your thoughts? Easy to fly? Any pros/cons? Also, is LAX a big E175 base?

Half wing

What are you crew support? A troll? How many hours at work are they every month, 160? Us, 320?. How many nights are they in their own bed, every one? Don't give me that go fly for Allegiant crap and fly one days. No one wants to work at that place any longer than they have to. GMAFB.

JKSees

I am enjoying the 175 so far. Its very easy to land. The avionics suite is nice. Its a full generation more advanced than the C-17 in terms of VNav which is cool for me, but it seems like SkyWest chose not to purchase some of the features (I don't know that for a fact). The avionics seem like they can be a little clunky, but I'm new so still getting my feet wet and not super comfortable or proficient yet. Maintenance at SkyWest appears to be very good from everything I have seen so far.

Other than the pay, which is appalling given the level of responsibility 121 pilots have, I am very impressed with SkyWest and their operation of the 175. I felt that the training here was of good quality and challenging. But again, I'm new and I'm coming from the military world so I do not have a lot of pertinent experience to compare it to.

LAX is smaller than ORD, but roughly equivalent in size to SFO, and SEA. Larger than PDX and DEN. About 90 FO's. As of now, if attrition etc remains constant, everyone gets ORD first, and can hold their preferred west coast base approx 6 mos after their training start date.

Groundpointfife

You want to know what really keeps pay too low at the regionals, the mindset that we can't have one union between all of the regionals (I am not talking just everyone join ALPA, but rather a regionals only union), or the idea that having so many regionals is ok.

Being realistic and saying well AA, DL and UA won't pay a penny more to their regionals until they are all getting the similar pay means either it happens slowly as each regional negotiates for better pay, or until ALL regional pilots can say enough is enough. Unfortunately where Comair failed is that Delta had choices of other regionals. That is the problem you still face today, where all regionals do not act together. Lets say that Republic wanted to do something, well guess what it will only be a short effect and they will lose flying.

If AA, DL or UA only had 1 regional partner, they would have to give them what they wanted. The same would be true if all regional pilots would only work for certain conditions. It is not realistic to tell someone, don't go fly for a regional until they pay fair wages (otherwise none of you would be in the industry right now). So having one voice with all pilots members would effectively make it the same as AA, DL or UA having one partner.

Here is my projection, regionals are giving higher compensation as time goes on, and you are correct, RJ pilots do more hard work for less money. But as the bonuses and compensation approach entry level mainline pay, we will see lowball regionals fold. GLA sounds like it is actually on its last legs. They are doing pay deferral (not paying employees), and are behind on lease payments by $80,000. Next will be places like Mesa. Possibly we will see consolidation of airlines like TSA, GoJet, Compass. As this all happens companies will be able to afford the higher wages, but there will become a point where mainline management realizes that it is better to insource the flying. What will be left is the big 3, Alaska, LCCs and wholey owned regionals. SkyWest will probably still be around.

RemoveB4Flight

This I agree with. Your last post saying working at a regional airline should be an internship was the part I had a problem with. It just sounded demeaning; like you were in agreement of the pay structure of short changing the lowly regional pilots because they aren't good enough.
There are countless regional pilots who are not only more than qualified for a mainline job, but are also great people with exceptional personalities. For some though, they haven't moved on either for personal reasons, or their application hasn't been magically selected from the pile.
I apologize if that isn't what you were insinuating, possibly it was my misunderstanding.

Groundpointfife

Yeah, I know what you mean. I can see how it that could be interpreted that way. We all want the pay and conditions to be closer to mainline, as you said there are some highly qualified folks flying for the regionals awaiting a call.

If I were a mainline manager I would be concerned that one of the lower paying regionals with fast upgrades, who are now starting to scrape for pilots, will put someone in the left seat who should not be there. Unfortunately as we know, sometimes changes in aviation are written in blood. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it might be what gets jr mainline pilots into the left seat of RJs on mainline property.

rickair7777

You guys are not going to solve the regional system. It serves a purpose, and will exist until either the purpose is no longer served, or until desperate lowering of standards to put meat in seats results in a few more colgans.

Mesa is allowed to exist for one purpose only...as a stalking horse to apply competitive pressure to everybody else.

Citation X

Can someone please tell me what current reserve times in the 175 are in LAX, SFO, PDX, and SEA? Thanks

hawk21

With deliveries coming to an end I would say probably pretty lengthy. I know a guy in SFO that was a line holder after a month or two but I think those days are almost over.

CaptSwift

For now those days are definitely over, but with the 100 new planes on rumor and San Diego base opening up...