In your experience, why are some pilots are regionals “lifers?”

Jordan93 said:
25. You can make 120 easily as a second year FO at a legacy. If you hustle a little bit first year you could make that too. The potential career earnings outweighs everything.
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Straight guarantee is pretty much that. So easily is an understatement when you add in everything else plus if you fly anything over basically 75, which in the summer you're almost guaranteed to as a JR FO.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Whoa, you mean as an instructor you were giving a pre-checkride and they told you to go eff yourself? Dude I would revoke their ATP on the spot. Just take it and flush down the toilet. If he asks how he’s supposed to get the license out, tell him “you’re a shi**y pilot, you’ll figure it out.” :D
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Yeah I didn’t say anything back because I knew it would have to go in a report.

I requested our chief instructor to observe and he agreed that it was a lost cause.

Fun story: for 20 years a hand flown raw-data ILS was part of the training and check-ride. These few pilots had a hard time performing this, So long story short they petitioned the POI to remove it from the Training and checking curriculum.....WHICH IT SUBSIQUENTLY WAS!!!! All because they didn’t want to do it in the checkride....

Other then those guys it was the best aviation job i ever had.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Can I ask your age?

It’s easy to say all this stuff. But call a spade a spade, Emu and Derg don’t have kids. The whole ball game chnaged in this career if you don’t have rug rats. You have a lot more options and risk you can take cause at worse you’re only gonna negatively affect yourself and spouse (if you’re married). Clarkgriswold and myself were lucky to be hired at our carriers in our 20s. Again, it’s much easier to make these leaps when you are young and with either no kids or just babies at the moment.


Now put yourself in the shoes of a 40-50 yr old RJ CA (of which there are thousands, thanks to the lost decade). Now they’re making $120-150k+ with great schedules, time off as they want, kids established in schools and spouses with jobs that are established. At this stage, they are not in a position to go to 1st yr pay and commute to a base far away and start at the bottom of a list again. So I totally get that. But just know that regional airlines aren’t guaranteed in any way. It’s a gamble.

Why did I leave the east coast for a west coast carrier? Simple. It was an escape from the regional but more importantly, there were no kids at that point. No kids made the decision a LOT easier. If there were already kids, I don’t think I would have even applied to VX. Just jetblue, Spirit, Frontier.

But on that same token of “you just can’t tell” as life turned out I had kids and now we are moving to the west coast anyway. Mainly so because it’s hard to walk away from 8th yr A320 CA pay.


The point: At any given moment in life we can only make the decisions we can based on our current situation and the cards we have dealt today. The future is unpredictable so do what you think is best today. Now that I have kids, entering exactly mid 30s, I totally understand RJ lifers and hold nothing against them.
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We’ve just had two mid-50s Sr CAs leave recently, I think it’s more personality driven.
 
Pay isn’t everything. Seniority and longevity matter too. You lose that staring over again. Maybe the RJ catches up on year 2 or 3 pay, but he’s not going to have the same schedules, vacation, time off as before. And those saying upgrade, you’ll be reserve for a looooong time. As for Delta , it isn’t going to get much better as long as Maddog displacements continue. Hiring seems to be minimal today, huge hiatus until fall, so get comfortable for the time being. Trends are changing. Even at UA tons of recent of widebody FOs are making the jump to 320/737 CA which wasn’t the trend before.


All I’m saying is unless you’re in their shoes, it’s hard to judge. You don’t know the specifics to their situation. Many things in life you can’t put a $ value on it.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Pay isn’t everything. Seniority and longevity matter too. You lose that staring over again. Maybe the RJ catches up on year 2 or 3 pay, but he’s not going to have the same schedules, vacation, time off as before. And those saying upgrade, you’ll be reserve for a looooong time. As for Delta , it isn’t going to get much better as long as Maddog displacements continue. Hiring seems to be minimal today, huge hiatus until fall, so get comfortable for the time being. Trends are changing. Even at UA tons of recent of widebody FOs are making the jump to 320/737 CA which wasn’t the trend before.


All I’m saying is unless you’re in their shoes, it’s hard to judge. You don’t know the specifics to their situation. Many things in life you can’t put a $ value on it.
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1.) Pay is everything when your outsourced job goes back to mainline and you're on the street, so let's try to make a lot and be more secure eh?
2.) Life at any legacy/major is exponentially better. If I stayed at CPZ I would be a "senior" Captain there right now, like top 5%. I think I was top 10-15% when I left and even if I was 45 yo there is no way in hell I would rather have that than what I have had the last couple years. No comparison. I pretty much have been able to get whatever days off and vacations I have wanted (within reason) since day 1 here.
3.) There is still tons of movement at SJI. We just had a bid that only had 25 posted A350 Captain positions and it generated I think close to 200 Captain awards. We are still running classes.
 
ClarkGriswold said:
1.) Pay is everything when your outsourced job goes back to mainline and you're on the street, so let's try to make a lot and be more secure eh?
2.) Life at any legacy/major is exponentially better. If I stayed at CPZ I would be a "senior" Captain there right now, like top 5%. I think I was top 10-15% when I left and even if I was 45 yo there is no way in hell I would rather have that than what I have had the last couple years. No comparison. I pretty much have been able to get whatever days off and vacations I have wanted (within reason) since day 1 here.
3.) There is still tons of movement at SJI. We just had a bid that only had 25 posted A350 Captain positions and it generated I think close to 200 Captain awards. We are still running classes.
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Not to mention 5% at Compass in certain bases (SEA) is meaningless now that we do mostly ex CRJ-200 flying out of here, short little unproductive hops with lots of sits.
At 31% SEA CA I just got 12 days off, 89 hrs. Woop de doo. Could have gotten a few more days off for less credit, but yeah. There's very little QOL to leave behind.
 
ClarkGriswold said:
1.) Pay is everything when your outsourced job goes back to mainline and you're on the street, so let's try to make a lot and be more secure eh?
2.) Life at any legacy/major is exponentially better. If I stayed at CPZ I would be a "senior" Captain there right now, like top 5%. I think I was top 10-15% when I left and even if I was 45 yo there is no way in hell I would rather have that than what I have had the last couple years. No comparison. I pretty much have been able to get whatever days off and vacations I have wanted (within reason) since day 1 here.
3.) There is still tons of movement at SJI. We just had a bid that only had 25 posted A350 Captain positions and it generated I think close to 200 Captain awards. We are still running classes.
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But then again, you live in base in SEA. Did you go Compass SEA to Delta SEA? If so, that's a much easier transition. I'm not doubting the general advice to move on and leave a regional, I'm simply saying I get their reasons for not wanting to move on. That guy at Compass today in the top 5% gets everything he wants. Everything. That said, I totally get the point regionals are unstable. "Back in my day" (and I'm totally using that now that @mrivc211 says I'm old :) ) Compass was NewCo Northwest Airlink with bases in MSP, DTW, and MEM. Look at it today. If you were based in those cities back then, you sure aren't today. Now it's SEA, LAX, and PHX I think? And tomorrow (figuratively, not literally) Compass could go out of business.

If I had to pick one regional airline that is probably going to make it, it'd be Skywest. They just seem to be very diversified and as long as regionals exist, it looks like Skywest will too.



Autothrust Blue said:
I wish I were advanced as you when I was 25, you god damn kids.
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Luck and timing. I was 25 in 2009, and everyone knows what that year was like in aviation. NO ONE was hiring.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
But then again, you live in base in SEA. Did you go Compass SEA to Delta SEA? If so, that's a much easier transition. I'm not doubting the general advice to move on and leave a regional, I'm simply saying I get their reasons for not wanting to move on. That guy at Compass today in the top 5% gets everything he wants. Everything. That said, I totally get the point regionals are unstable. "Back in my day" (and I'm totally using that now that @mrivc211 says I'm old :) ) Compass was NewCo Northwest Airlink with bases in MSP, DTW, and MEM. Look at it today. If you were based in those cities back then, you sure aren't today. Now it's SEA, LAX, and PHX I think? And tomorrow (figuratively, not literally) Compass could go out of business.

If I had to pick one regional airline that is probably going to make it, it'd be Skywest. They just seem to be very diversified and as long as regionals exist, it looks like Skywest will too.





Luck and timing. I was 25 in 2009, and everyone knows what that year was like in aviation. NO ONE was hiring.
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O lets see I lived in MSP and commuted to DTW, was home based, upgraded to LAX, back to MSP. Hired at SJI, NYC Based then got SEA and picked up and moved there. SEA was just opening when i left.
News flash, the couple friends I have left there in that 5% arn’t happy. One just started at SJI in DEC and his QOL is already better it sounds like.
 
ClarkGriswold said:
O lets see I lived in MSP and commuted to DTW, was home based, upgraded to LAX, back to MSP. Hired at SJI, NYC Based then got SEA and picked up and moved there. SEA was just opening when i left.
News flash, the couple friends I have left there in that 5% arn’t happy.
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Ah I see. Good move to live in base at SEA. I didn't realize SEA was a new-ish base for the domestic categories. I don't know if NWA had anything but widebodies there. And honestly, I don't know anybody happy at Compass. The few I knew there from my time were the ones hired before Summer-ish 2010 and took the guaranteed Delta job. They were pretty happy.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Ah I see. Good move to live in base at SEA. I didn't realize SEA was a new-ish base for the domestic categories. I don't know if NWA had anything but widebodies there. And honestly, I don't know anybody happy at Compass. The few I knew there from my time were the ones hired before Summer-ish 2010 and took the guaranteed Delta job. They were pretty happy.
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I'm saying Compass was opening SEA around when I left. SJI just opened the 73 there but the ER and 330 were already open for awhile.

I loved it there. Times were good, until the AA flying and the great migration west.
 
Honestly, the only one I’d have wanted a long term tie up with was the one I had a long term tie up with. Of the lot of them, the sheer size and scale of the Mormons makes them survivable, but overall, get in and GTFO as quickly as you can.

With the exception of the Brasilia: 0/10, would not repeat, no stars, D minus see me after class etc.
 
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