User997 said:
Well, thats why you shouldn't stay at a regional for 10 years. Wouldn't feel sorry for anyone that did that.
I can see that you have been drinking the Kool Aid from somewhere. Even in good times getting to a major is not assured.
Current conditions, there is a very good chance that the regionals will be a pilots career. There is a lot of luck involved in making it to a major, and even more luck involved in being able to actually retire from a major.
Look around at the senior guys at regionals, for the most part they are not there because they are bad pilots, or because they didn't apply themselves......most just never got that lucky break, never made contact with that one person that had the clout to get them in, or simply just missed the optimum window for employment because of economic downturns. Some of the best pilots I ever flew with were senior regional guys. In other cases I flew with a few senior guys at the major and wondered how they ever got to be senior at a major.
That is the real problem with the payscales at the regionals, a 1000 or 1500 hour pilot never sees himself staying at a regional, when they hire on they take whatever poverty scale that is being paid because they believe they will be hired by a major in a couple of years. Once he has been there for 5 or 6 years, and knows how the business works, reality starts to set in.
User997, no matter what your Kool Aid supplier has been telling you, you have a much better chance of being stuck at a regional for 15+ years than you do of making it to a major. All you have to do is run the numbers on total pilots in the U.S. and compare it with the total number at the majors, the numbers are not in your favor. Couple that with the fact that even in todays world, you only have a few "prime" years to make it to a major. There are not many newhires at majors over 40 years old. It is not as bad as the previous decades, but age does still affect your chances. The old man in my class of 50 at the major was 40 years old, retired military, the oldest civ pilot was 35, and he came from a supplemental carrier flying as Capt. on a DC-10. Miss your window because of economic factors or whatever, and your chances drop dramatically.
Look around, get some education about the airline industry, talk to pilots that have been there, Once you do, you will not make statements like the one above.
