Champeen07

Am I the only one that gets more annoyed every time one of the regionals announces a new contract with high pay rates? Only because I feel like the rates that will be presented to us wont even come close to matching it. Hell even a 50% raise for the first couple year guys would still be less than the regional captains are making.

Our rates need to start at $160 for first year guys and go way up from there. Unfortunately I don't see that happening and the contract will get voted in by all of the 15+ year guys making serious bucks and not caring that the new guys are actually giving up a lot of money to come here. Which means they wont do it and we wont be able to fill classes.

WHACKMASTER

No. You’re not the only one.

hoover

I agree but what annoys me more is all the guys say " yeah but they have PBS or they're a regional etc.
who cares they make way more than we do and attitude like that are why WN or other majors can offer less.
who cares what they have or don't what matters is what we want and deserve.

flyguy81

Guessing yr 1 pay will be in the 115-120 tfp range. Our yr 1-5 already lags OAL’s so will need to come up substantially.

I think the regionals are at a breaking point. They’re being funded by the legacies and there’s no reason to keep paying obscene salaries and bonuses when you can just pay them legacy rates and start in a RJ and work up.

The days of cheap subcontractor’s are over. Look for the legacies to start bringing it in house….would be good for both sides IMO.

ZapBrannigan

This. Let’s not forget that prior to about 1995 the legacies flew:
DC9-30 with 100 seats
Fokker 28 with 65 seats
Fokker 100 with 90 seats
737-200 with 100 seats

There was a time when there were no regionals, but rather a collection of commuters flying 19-37 seat turboprops that fed the hub. The idea was incremental revenue. A few people from Altoona, and a few from Beckley, and a few from Jamestown… bring them all to Pittsburgh and fill up a 737 to Orlando. It wasn’t until the ALPA foolishly allowed RJs to fall outside of scope that suddenly you have highly capable jets that could bypass hubs, or raid competitor hubs operating in big markets at high frequency. It was BS then and it’s BS now. Bring the flying back to the mainline and NEVER make that mistake again. Scope is sacrosanct.

WHACKMASTER

Amen! It torques me off to no end how uneducated so many in our pilot group are about what you wrote about above.

Case in point, when discussing the A220-300 and how we went with the MAX7 instead, I’ve had several FOs comment, “Good, I didn’t want to fly an RJ anyway”. That “RJ” has the same capacity as the majority of airplanes in our fleet and even greater range, not to mention a FAR nicer cockpit.

Talk about the ultimate facepalm moment. Not surprisingly they all were on their first airline gig at SWA.

ZapBrannigan

I got similar comments from the left seat. I tried to tell them that thing could carry 140 pax from ISP to BUR nonstop without runway issues on either end, but they still thought it was an RJ and nothing I said was going to change their minds.

The absolute WORST comment I got though was from a former single seat fighter pilot who said that military pilots shouldn’t have to fly the “RJ” and should be given some kind of superseniority when hired and fly the 737 - out of seniority if necessary - if we got that type. He was serious!! WTF?!

The same guy asked what would happen if an A220 FO wanted to upgrade to 737 captain with no 737 experience.

I was like… “uh…he bids it, he is awarded it, and he goes to school?”

He told me that couldn’t happen. You had to be a 737 copilot before you could upgrade on a 737.

I attempted to reason with him by explaining that at the legacies there are lots of times when an FO might never have flown a type before upgrading to Captain on it. He told me I was wrong and that couldn’t happen. Mind you this is the one and only airline he has ever worked for and has apparently never had communication with a pilot from any other airline…? 🙄

WHACKMASTER

You just described the crux of so many problems at this airline. The same mentality was prevalent about the -300 around that little marriage “thing” over a decade ago.

My absolute favorite bag tag has been “Not in the Air Force until I got here”. Dip$7!t$… 🙄

WHACKMASTER

And I’m willing to bet that there is far more cluelessness in the left seat than the right about what is accepted as normal and common practice in the 121 world.

ZapBrannigan

I’m not trying to sound anti military. I honestly believe that classes in airline history and airline labor relations should be required prior to attending Indoc at any major airline. As a profession we need to do a better job of learning from our collective history. Those would benefit ANYONE who is new to the profession regardless of their background. The reality is that the generation who lived through turboprops, pay for training, Gulfstream international type schemes (pay to sit in the right seat), B scales, is getting old. The young folks joining the company now may have taken their first flying lessons POST 9/11!!! They may never have flown anything with steam gauges. They may never have flown an airliner without an autopilot or FMS. They may not know the history of the RJ and why it was so damaging to our profession.

Airline pilots do a poor job of indoctrinating our young because we just assume they did the same thing to get here that we did. Well, it should come as no surprise that none of our new hires these days flew cancelled checks in clapped out Barons in the middle of the night. Times change and with them so do perceptions. We all view this job through the lens of our own past experience. We have to figure out a way to share that history with our new hires without sounding like we’re preaching to them about the glory days.