Regional Airlines and Professionalism in the Industry

It is well known that the aviation industry is and has been feeling the effects of the anticipated pilot shortage. Thousands of pilots are needed to be hired in the next few years. The regional airline industry is the largest in need of these pilots. It is also known that the starting pay for regionals is very low with high work hours and minimal benefits. The industry has known that the shortage was coming for many years, but nothing changed. The pilot shortage is definitely a real thing, but there is an argument on the true cause of it. I think that it truly is a shortage and there are not enough pilots to fill the cockpits, but regional airline pay and professionalism may have some sort of blame to this. They have been growing very quickly in the past two decades and haven't given much to pilot's other than more work hours to include on their already overworked schedule. Recently there have been a few pay increases which will make the industry a little more manageable (Fact and Fallacy, 2016).

The regional industry's lifestyle towards pilots may have been what put them in this shortage in the first place. Without any sort of returnable pay after these pilots spend upwards of $100,000 or more on training a $20,000 starting salary does not sound very appealing. With the regional airlines flying more than half of the domestic U.S. routes there should have been some planning to make their industry more appealing for incoming pilots to come to them (Leocha, 2010). The easiest problem to see is pay, but on top of that there are benefits, workday hours, and company respect.

There is definitely an actual shortage of pilots in the industry, especially with so many retiring in the next few years. Those pilots retiring from the mainlines will open positions to the pilots high in seniority in the regionals and drain the pilot roster from the bottom. There will strictly not be enough pilots to continue flying all of the routes. Although this is not only a problem with the shortage of pilots. The regional carriers have grown too quickly and have not created an incentive to bring more pilots in. Flight school is a very, very expensive venture to undertake. As a flight student I can personally accord to that. The Regional Airlines Association has been trying to encourage students at the high school and collegiate level to try aviation with incentives such as bridge programs and gateway programs to get them to the regional airlines quicker (The Coming U.S. Pilot, 2015). That is a good start, but what they should really be doing is giving opportunities such as training cost compensation for guaranteed pilots or more competitive and attractive salaries to get more certified pilots to want to join the ranks in the first place.

Professionalism is having a quality and skill expected for a task that will also represent a company in a desirable manner. Pilots should take better care to their training/aircraft knowledge and know that it will directly relate to their personal and passengers' safety. An airline's management has to understand that pilots are only human and will make mistakes, but those mistakes can be exponentially increased when they are working long hours in less than satisfactory environments. It is also management's responsibility to ensure the quality of the training given to pilots is in compliance with the industry's standards and that pilots are fully capable of maintaining safe flight.

I certainly feel that low pilot pay has some cause in the lack of professionalism in the industry. Regional pilots (many of them) see the regional carriers as stepping stones to the major carriers. They want to spend as little time as they can with the regionals and hop up to the "real" airlines. If regional carriers showed that their outlook on air travel was the same as the majors or even beyond the regional airline industry would quickly change for the better. I certainly will be trying to have the mindset to learn something new everyday. Even if you fly the same route over and over, small things will change day to day and give new opportunities and openings to see and learn things from a different perspective. The aviation industry is changing and the people on the bottom of the [seniority] list will have to decide where they want it to go.

References

Fact and Fallacy of the "Pilot Shortage" (2016, March 3). In Patrick Smith's Ask The Pilot. Retrieved from http://www.askthepilot.com/pilot-shortage/

Leocha, C. (2010, March 12). Regional airlines with 2nd-class safety fly most domestic routes, more coming. In United Travelers. Retrieved from https://travelersunited.org/today/regional-airlines-with-2nd-class-safety-fly-most-domestic-routes-more-coming/

The Coming U.S. Pilot Shortage Is Real (2015, February 16). In Aviation Week. Retrieved from http://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/coming-us-pilot-shortage-real