The article below is part of a blog entry here:
Lifting the Corner of the Regional Airline Rug
The Regional Pilot Blues
But there's one thing that sucks worse than being a regional airline, and that's being a regional airline pilot. Major airlines hire regional airlines to fly small planes because regional airlines do it more cheaply and they do it more cheaply because their costs are less and their costs are less primarily because they pay less, particularly pilots.
As this says, a first year first officer at at Republic (which flies for Delta, US Airways, American & United) makes $22 per hour. And he'll probably get paid for about 80 hours a month, maybe more if he's diligent about picking up flights. Yeah, he's getting about $22K per year, and he's got your life in his hands. OK, he'll make a per diem, on the road subsistence, but his take home is not a lot. You just hope his financial worries fade away as he aims that Embraer 145 (see picture) at the runway in a howling blizzard at in the middle of the night at O'Hare. Bet you think he's worth a bit more than $22K at that particular time.
Pay does go up the next year, maybe to $29K, maybe a bit more, but that's not much. Your hero in the right seat up front is eating a lot of Kraft singles between Wonderbread on his lunch breaks between landing RJs full of I-bankers and lawyers (some making 10 or even 100 times what he makes) at LaGuardia. Scratch that, he can't afford national brands, he probably buys the Costco brand. For him, ketchup is a vegetable. Which may be why pilots are known for being cheap -- unafraid to lift unattended newspapers or relieve restaurants of sugar packets.
Time out. Lest you think we're raving Bolsheviks, we're not. We don't like unions. We don't have much respect for ALPA, the pilot union. But you don't have to be Rosa Luxemburg to to be a mite concerned. Time in.
Thing is, the system is set up to ensure this result. As far as the legacy major airlines are concerned, that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, they like it, uh-huh uh-huh. Historically, pilot unions wear the pants in their relationship with major airlines. It's very difficult for an airline to replace a pilot work force (it effectively happened only once, when Frank Lorenzo broke the Continental pilot union in the early 80s. Frank Lorenzo is consequently a name reviled throughout the pilot community). It takes too long to train new pilots, and you can't really fire them outside of a strike. When pilots walk out, or even just work to rule, the airline bleeds.
So major airlines are stuck with the pilots they employ. And in good times, those pilots can bend the airline over a barrel and have their wicked way with it. That's what United pilots did in the "summer of love" in 2000 until United's then-CEO called them Daddy and gave them a big raise--it wasn't even a strike (in bad times, the shoe is on the other foot which is why United pilots have coughed up big concessions the last few years).
However, things are much better for the major if it doesn't directly hire the pilot, but hires a regional airline instead. Every time the major airline has a regional contract up for renewal, the major is going to pick the regional with the best bid -- which will be highly correlated with those with low pilot costs. Yes, reliability matters, but after all, all a contract regional airline does is operate airplanes. It doesn't market, it doesn't yield manage, it doesn't have a frequent flyer program... if it can't operate reliably, it's got no business being a regional airline.
If a regional pilot union succeeds in forcing wages higher, all its doing is making its carrier less capable of winning future contracts.
So the regional airline system has inbuilt pressure to keep regional airline pilot wages low. In fact, if major airlines could get away with it, they'd likely contract all flying to third party operating entities (perhaps keep their own flight attendants on board to maintain service quality), which would end up in the same low bid system as the regionals.
But, so sad, the majors can't do this, because major airline pilot contracts say they can't. These are the so-called "scope clauses" within such contracts, which reserve all flying on big aircraft for, say, United, to pilots in the United pilot union, where "big aircraft" in the case of United means bigger than 70 seats. Scope clauses are a big deal -- read the article again and you'll see at the end where Northwest is trying to jack up the maximum size of aircraft that can be outsourced to regionals. In airline-speak they're trying to "relax the scope clause".
This is why every regional airline pilot dreams of the day when he'll (they're mostly still all men...) get picked up by a major airline, especially if it's Southwest, UPS or Fedex (stable, profitable airlines which haven't forced concessions on their pilots). Check out the numbers here, for instance. Much better.
So next time you're on a regional jet, look for the tip cup and give generously.
Lifting the Corner of the Regional Airline Rug
The Regional Pilot Blues
But there's one thing that sucks worse than being a regional airline, and that's being a regional airline pilot. Major airlines hire regional airlines to fly small planes because regional airlines do it more cheaply and they do it more cheaply because their costs are less and their costs are less primarily because they pay less, particularly pilots.
As this says, a first year first officer at at Republic (which flies for Delta, US Airways, American & United) makes $22 per hour. And he'll probably get paid for about 80 hours a month, maybe more if he's diligent about picking up flights. Yeah, he's getting about $22K per year, and he's got your life in his hands. OK, he'll make a per diem, on the road subsistence, but his take home is not a lot. You just hope his financial worries fade away as he aims that Embraer 145 (see picture) at the runway in a howling blizzard at in the middle of the night at O'Hare. Bet you think he's worth a bit more than $22K at that particular time.
Pay does go up the next year, maybe to $29K, maybe a bit more, but that's not much. Your hero in the right seat up front is eating a lot of Kraft singles between Wonderbread on his lunch breaks between landing RJs full of I-bankers and lawyers (some making 10 or even 100 times what he makes) at LaGuardia. Scratch that, he can't afford national brands, he probably buys the Costco brand. For him, ketchup is a vegetable. Which may be why pilots are known for being cheap -- unafraid to lift unattended newspapers or relieve restaurants of sugar packets.
Time out. Lest you think we're raving Bolsheviks, we're not. We don't like unions. We don't have much respect for ALPA, the pilot union. But you don't have to be Rosa Luxemburg to to be a mite concerned. Time in.
Thing is, the system is set up to ensure this result. As far as the legacy major airlines are concerned, that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, they like it, uh-huh uh-huh. Historically, pilot unions wear the pants in their relationship with major airlines. It's very difficult for an airline to replace a pilot work force (it effectively happened only once, when Frank Lorenzo broke the Continental pilot union in the early 80s. Frank Lorenzo is consequently a name reviled throughout the pilot community). It takes too long to train new pilots, and you can't really fire them outside of a strike. When pilots walk out, or even just work to rule, the airline bleeds.
So major airlines are stuck with the pilots they employ. And in good times, those pilots can bend the airline over a barrel and have their wicked way with it. That's what United pilots did in the "summer of love" in 2000 until United's then-CEO called them Daddy and gave them a big raise--it wasn't even a strike (in bad times, the shoe is on the other foot which is why United pilots have coughed up big concessions the last few years).
However, things are much better for the major if it doesn't directly hire the pilot, but hires a regional airline instead. Every time the major airline has a regional contract up for renewal, the major is going to pick the regional with the best bid -- which will be highly correlated with those with low pilot costs. Yes, reliability matters, but after all, all a contract regional airline does is operate airplanes. It doesn't market, it doesn't yield manage, it doesn't have a frequent flyer program... if it can't operate reliably, it's got no business being a regional airline.
If a regional pilot union succeeds in forcing wages higher, all its doing is making its carrier less capable of winning future contracts.
So the regional airline system has inbuilt pressure to keep regional airline pilot wages low. In fact, if major airlines could get away with it, they'd likely contract all flying to third party operating entities (perhaps keep their own flight attendants on board to maintain service quality), which would end up in the same low bid system as the regionals.
But, so sad, the majors can't do this, because major airline pilot contracts say they can't. These are the so-called "scope clauses" within such contracts, which reserve all flying on big aircraft for, say, United, to pilots in the United pilot union, where "big aircraft" in the case of United means bigger than 70 seats. Scope clauses are a big deal -- read the article again and you'll see at the end where Northwest is trying to jack up the maximum size of aircraft that can be outsourced to regionals. In airline-speak they're trying to "relax the scope clause".
This is why every regional airline pilot dreams of the day when he'll (they're mostly still all men...) get picked up by a major airline, especially if it's Southwest, UPS or Fedex (stable, profitable airlines which haven't forced concessions on their pilots). Check out the numbers here, for instance. Much better.
So next time you're on a regional jet, look for the tip cup and give generously.
