If a picture is worth a thousand words, a film clip is worth an encyclopedia. It’s natural to take a picture of “Today” then make assumptions about tomorrow. If you’re an optimist, you even skew the future events in your favor. It is however, exercising due diligence to look back at the movie and view how we got to today’s picture and make an intelligent assumption going forward. What is the trend?
Recently in Salt Lake City at the RAA Convention it was announced regional flying now makes up over half of all US domestic departures. That should be a very significant point of reference for every pilot in the industry. Pilots come into the career many different ways and with different expectations. A significant number view the regional airline as just a stepping stone to a better job somewhere in the future. While most pilots acknowledge some will get stuck at the regional level, many rationalize “It will not happen to me”. Problem is the numbers are changing. Change is insidious. I remember 30 years ago commuter departures were so few they made up really no significant part of the scheduled airline business. Since they now own over 50% of all departures, that same trend on a linear scale unabated would indicate 30 years from now they would own 100% of all domestic flying. To make matters worse it has occurred on an exponential curve, so really another 30 years of “good jobs” is just an optimistic fantasy. This is why many in the industry get the feeling they are trying to swim upstream and making no progress (or constantly going backwards). For a person just starting out by the time they reach retirement there will not be any major airlines remaining as we now know them. I’m talking about career jobs not airlines with gross revenue over 1B.
Impossible? Before deregulation there were International and Domestic airlines. The winning gig was to get on with TWA or Pan Am. Everything else was, well, something slightly short of a home run. We saw what happened after deregulation. The international Goliaths were vanquished by the domestics. If you don’t see the same thing happening now, (regional/major) you need serious LASIK.
Scope? Good idea but it never solved the problem. It proved only to be palliative care for a very sick patient.
Recently in Salt Lake City at the RAA Convention it was announced regional flying now makes up over half of all US domestic departures. That should be a very significant point of reference for every pilot in the industry. Pilots come into the career many different ways and with different expectations. A significant number view the regional airline as just a stepping stone to a better job somewhere in the future. While most pilots acknowledge some will get stuck at the regional level, many rationalize “It will not happen to me”. Problem is the numbers are changing. Change is insidious. I remember 30 years ago commuter departures were so few they made up really no significant part of the scheduled airline business. Since they now own over 50% of all departures, that same trend on a linear scale unabated would indicate 30 years from now they would own 100% of all domestic flying. To make matters worse it has occurred on an exponential curve, so really another 30 years of “good jobs” is just an optimistic fantasy. This is why many in the industry get the feeling they are trying to swim upstream and making no progress (or constantly going backwards). For a person just starting out by the time they reach retirement there will not be any major airlines remaining as we now know them. I’m talking about career jobs not airlines with gross revenue over 1B.
Impossible? Before deregulation there were International and Domestic airlines. The winning gig was to get on with TWA or Pan Am. Everything else was, well, something slightly short of a home run. We saw what happened after deregulation. The international Goliaths were vanquished by the domestics. If you don’t see the same thing happening now, (regional/major) you need serious LASIK.
Scope? Good idea but it never solved the problem. It proved only to be palliative care for a very sick patient.