Are the regionals angling for a repeal of the ATP rule?

ZapBrannigan

ZapBrannigan

If it ain’t a Boeing, I’m not going. No choice.
I read Brian Bedford's letter this morning describing the steps Republic is taking to mitigate the effects of the so-called pilot shortage. (parking the E140/145s etc)

Yesterday Cranky Flier posted a blog describing how ExpressJet forced the closure of the UAL CLE hub by telling UAL they were unable to fly their schedule due to pilot staffing.

Great Lakes is suspending service to some markets and Silver is supposedly working with their union to negotiate a more attractive contract. Retention bonuses are becoming more widespread throughout the industry.

Does it seem to anyone else as though all of this media attention might be by design - the RAA attempting to seek repeal of the 1500 hour rule?

Personally I thought ALPA's press release was spot on - there are thousands of well qualified pilots either furloughed or who have sought more lucrative employment overseas. These pilots would love to come home to fly, but not for the pay and benefits currently offered by US regionals.

I hope that there is a clear and concerted effort to defend this new rule and to prevent it's repeal, along with ab initio, cabotage, or whatever other anti-labor ideas are bubbling to the surface to combat this so-called "shortage".

Supply and demand is shifting to labor and Mr. Bedford just doesn't like to have his cheese moved. In my opinion he's just going to have to find a way to make his company successful without depending on low salaries and poor benefits for labor. That will take some work, because he is accustomed to those conditions that have existed over the last 20 years in the regional airline business. But his failure to manage his business should not result in a suspension of the laws of supply and demand. Nor should it result in watering down of minimum experience requirements that should have been implemented a decade ago.

Your thoughts?
 
Yeah I think there is going to be some real push back in the next year on this rule. The more of a CF they can make it look like the more of a chance they'll have, this is act1. Im just fearful of the solution to this "pilot shortage", hopefully its not age 70.
 
We've all said for years that eventually the regionals would become economically unviable.

We've all said for years that this would be a good thing.

We've all said for years that the result will be for regional to shut down, and for the flying to go back to mainline.

This is happening, and now people are crapping their pants.

The sky is not falling, and anybody that was paying attention saw this happening 5 years ago when age 65 game into effect.
 
While I do agree with you @jtrain609, I do see the RAA et al. throwing whatever money they can at attempting to preserve the model. If mainline partners can spend a few million in lobbying to preserve 76-seaters flying around at regional rates they're going to do it. We certainly aren't going to have 20+ regional airlines with 100s of aircraft anymore though.

I wouldn't be surprised if the media attention is being orchestrated by the RAA and mainline partners. Its their last attempt at saving the dying business model.
 
bronco21016 said:
While I do agree with you @jtrain609, I do see the RAA et al. throwing whatever money they can at attempting to preserve the model. If mainline partners can spend a few million in lobbying to preserve 76-seaters flying around at regional rates they're going to do it. We certainly aren't going to have 20+ regional airlines with 100s of aircraft anymore though.

I wouldn't be surprised if the media attention is being orchestrated by the RAA and mainline partners. Its their last attempt at saving the dying business model.
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It's a gradual step up process and the mainline carriers know it.

First the 50 seat aircraft becomes uneconomical, so you find ways to get rid of an aircraft that is oversubscribed in a market that has overcapacity even when you get rid of those 50 seaters. How do you do that? You take advantage of any disaster that you can. This is not new, it has been done in the past, and it will be done again in the future. That disaster right now is the pilot shortage.

tl;dr, what @Polar742 said.

What comes after that? You replace those 50 seat aircraft with 76 seat aircraft, which is what's happening right now. Soon we won't see any 50 seat aircraft, and instead we'll have a (smaller) regional industry of 76 seat aircraft.

That'll buy you a few years.

When those become uneconomical, you replace them with extra fuel efficient 76 seat aircraft with geared engines like the EMB-175 E2.

An aircraft that Skywest has 100 orders for.

This will buy you a few more years.

This buys you enough time to purchase 717's, 190's, F100's, DC-9-30's, or whatever the new hotness is.

Within 8-10 years, the regionals won't exist anymore and all that feed will be up at mainline again.

So at this point, somebody comes in and screams, "BUT THE MAINLINE PARTNERS NEED THE REGIONALS! THEY'VE ALWAYS NEEDED THE REGIONALS!!!!!!11"

This, of course, belies history.

Before the regionals existed, Airways was flying around F100's, Northwest was flying around small DC-9's, and Delta had 737-200's, as did United. The mainline carriers used to do this feed, and then they found it to be cheaper to farm it out to the regionals. The moment it's cheaper for the mainline carriers to do the flying back at mainline, the regionals will go away. They were always a temporary solution, and will only be kept around as long as they're useful.

This is a chess game, guys. If you can see what the moves are moving forward, you always win and you're never shocked. If you can't, then you'll get bounced around and be confused about WHY you're getting bounced around.
 
ZapBrannigan said:
Your thoughts?
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I'm sure they're doing everything they can. Hopefully it's too late.

On a somewhat related note, i wonder if we'll see a PR campaign slamming pilots and how they're "overpaid". Last week I heard a rumor that the suits at LUV sent a company email out that provided pilot pay scales and claimed they were unsustainable. Supposedly now the gate agents and rampers are saying things like "we had no idea you made so much".

Then 2 days ago i hear a 30 second report on the radio that says pilots have "landed or started to land at the wrong airport 150 times" over the last 10 years (or so). Makes you wonder.
 
jtrain609 said:
The moment it's cheaper for the mainline carriers to do the flying back at mainline, the regionals will go away.
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I've been saying this a lot lately. I think the higher regional costs will come from cancellations and buying pax hotels, food, travel vouchers, etc. If the costs of having your network disrupted are high enough, mainline carriers will want to control their own operation again.

Another thing to consider: Airplanes like the CRJ 900 and especially the E175 are expensive to operate with 76 seats. If you could fly them with 81 seats, they would be much less expensive per seat (CASM for you non airliners.net folks). Unless scope gets loosened, those planes will have to be flown by mainline pilots. Again, forcing flying back to mainline. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening until the 76 seat operators start cancelling flights for lack of staffing...but it could be happening within 2-3 years.
 
I don't see any politicians on the hill pushing to repeal this thing, unless they don't want to be on the hill anymore....

Talk about a tough sell. I think an extension on the mandatory retirement age is infinitely more probable even though that is only a temporary fix.

This rule would be made irrelevant in 6 months to 1 year if regional FOs started at 50k....It's infuriating.
 
hcaeborev said:
I don't see any politicians on the hill pushing to repeal this thing, unless they don't want to be on the hill anymore....

Talk about a tough sell. I think an extension on the mandatory retirement age is infinitely more probable even though that is only a temporary fix.

This rule would be made irrelevant in 6 months to 1 year if regional FOs started at 50k....It's infuriating.
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The regional contracts with their mainline partners don't allow for this type of pay bump. Giving first year FOs this kind of raise means everyone will want a pay bump, and the regionals cannot afford this.

I agree with jtrain, this is a gradual step towards shrinking 50 seat flying, replacing it with 76 seaters, and bringing more flying to mainline.
 
There's one other thing being left out of this conversation. The regional head honchos and mainline partners and feds have already begun discussions of how to bring about a MPL like they do with ab initio over in Europe/Asia. If they can get the 250 hour wonders back in the seats that way, they'll do it.
 
Delta didn't pick up a bunch of 717's because they were simply on sale.

Position yourself to move up the food chain by meeting the qualifications or prepare your "Dear Derg" letter.
 
Rocketman99 said:
There's one other thing being left out of this conversation. The regional head honchos and mainline partners and feds have already begun discussions of how to bring about a MPL like they do with ab initio over in Europe/Asia. If they can get the 250 hour wonders back in the seats that way, they'll do it.
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This too.
 
hcaeborev said:
This rule would be made irrelevant in 6 months to 1 year if regional FOs started at 50k....It's infuriating.
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Even if they got rid of the 1500 hr rule or bumped up pay to 50k, flight training is still really expensive. Student loans for flight training aren't available like in the past.
I think there are going to be staffing problems for regionals no matter what solutions they come up with.
 
As long as mainline continues to act like it is 2004 staffing at the regionals will only get worse.

Growing small airlines only exacerbates the shortage.


In the end they should have seen this coming. At the time when these regionals were getting ramped up the legacies knew that age 60 was only 5 years down the road. Age 65 was just a delay and mainline never took the chance to fix the problem.

Short term management is what screwed this up.
 
stuckingfk said:
The regional contracts with their mainline partners don't allow for this type of pay bump. Giving first year FOs this kind of raise means everyone will want a pay bump, and the regionals cannot afford this.

I agree with jtrain, this is a gradual step towards shrinking 50 seat flying, replacing it with 76 seaters, and bringing more flying to mainline.
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They can get around that with a bonus.
 
DE727UPS said:
The Buffalo crash families came together and really pushed for the new regs. Politically, they were very effective. They need to put out a press conference to counter the RAA.
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The families didnt just come together on their own. I remember a movement on Doug's website that brought the families together and pushed for the new regs.
 
hcaeborev said:
I don't see any politicians on the hill pushing to repeal this thing, unless they don't want to be on the hill anymore....
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I don't think that matters all that much.

If the RAA started a campaign labeling the 1500hr rule as "big government" and "anti business", they'd likely be able to get votes for a bill modifying the rule to be effectively useless (by allowing an MPL instead of an ATP for example), and the success of Wall St. at rewriting or otherwise neutering regulations that had overwhelming popular support shows that Congress isn't that hard to buy off.
 
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