New E-175

[AvroGuy]

More importantly than eveyones bad mouthing other airlines, I must say this; Siucaflight you have had some great avatars lately. I must say bravo.

 

[pdub20s]

Yeah, you'll have somewhere to go. Sooner or later all the legacy carriers will get back on their feet. Once they're financially stable they will start taking back all the flying they have lost over the past 5 years. CRJ-200s and ERJ 135/145s will head to the desert, leaving the regionals with 70 seaters and EMB 170/175s while the legacy guys fly anything over 100 seats. The fleet size at your average regional will be cut in half practically overnight, and there will be massive furloughs at the regional level as the mainline carriers begin to reabsorb the flying. Regional CEOs will feel the pain as the start dusting off their resumes while they try to explain the "temporary dip in earnings" to their shareholders. While it will, obviously, be temporarily catastrophic to the junior guys at the regionals when the music stops, it will be the first positive step to reestablishing this profession. Jobs will open at the majors and attrition at the regionals will return to 1999-2000 levels. "Feeders" will feed while majors fly the majority of the trunk root structure. Things will be good for all until the next downturn.

There's my "I have a dream" speech for you.

Or, the ATA and the politicians will continue to let this profession be Wal-Martized until pilots are replaced by "seat occupants" because quality people will no longer be interested in the profession. Accident rates will go up, and the software engineers will be forced to develop better automation. The "seat occupants" will then be relatively protected from their own inexperience. Because the job will then be on par with that of a bus driver, wages will be able to be kept low. On the bright side, when you go to recurrent every year, you will no longer be forced to listen to long-winded discussions on single-engine climb gradients or hydraulic system redundancies. For the benefit of the lowest common denominator, you will now be forced to listen to long-winded discussions on the best method of pressing the "easy button" so that the "seat occupants" can go back to reading about Anna-Nicole's autopsy and Brittney Spears' buzz cut. You, the professional pilot, will be an anachronism. You will be John Henry in the age of the steam hammer. You will be the American coal miner in the age of continuous mining machines. You will be the bank teller in the age of ATMs and online banking. You get the idea.

There's my "I have been to the mountaintop" speech for you.

It's a 50/50 proposition the way I see it.

"In the year two thousond....In the year two thousooooooooooooooond......."

who wants to take it from here?