The aviation industry is currently facing significant challenges, primarily due to a shortage of aircraft and engine deliveries, which has slowed hiring across airlines. Dr. Jim Higgins and I delve into the state of the industry, discussing the implications of these shortages and how airlines are managing their workforce amid ongoing demand. We explore the impact of mergers, such as Alaska Airlines' acquisition of Hawaiian, and the cultural shifts that accompany such changes. Additionally, we touch on the evolving landscape for regional airlines and the importance of networking for aspiring pilots navigating this competitive environment. Join us as we unpack the complexities of the current aviation climate and what the future might hold for pilots and airlines alike.

Amidst a whirlwind of changes and challenges in the aviation industry, the latest episode of the Pilot to Pilot podcast features a compelling dialogue between Justin and Dr. Jim Higgins, a prominent figure in aviation academia. The episode opens with a stark analysis of the current hiring landscape, heavily influenced by the ongoing production delays from major aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus. Dr. Higgins elucidates how these delays have created a trickle-down effect, stunting hiring efforts at major airlines and thereby affecting regional carriers that rely on a steady influx of pilots. The discussion paints a vivid picture of an industry in flux, grappling with both supply chain issues and evolving consumer demands post-pandemic.

As the conversation continues, Justin and Jim delve into the complexities of mergers, particularly focusing on Alaska Airlines' acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines. The cultural implications of such mergers are critically examined, as both hosts highlight how the distinctive cultures of each airline can lead to friction and challenges in integration. Jim shares insights into how historical mergers have played out in the past, providing a context for understanding how Alaska might navigate its latest acquisition. The talk then transitions to the competitive landscape, where low-cost carriers like JetBlue and Spirit face mounting pressures, and the conversation reveals the shifting dynamics that could reshape the airline industry.

Takeaways:

• The current pilot hiring environment is heavily influenced by aircraft delivery delays from manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus.
• Airlines are facing challenges with a shortage of engines and aircraft, affecting their ability to hire pilots effectively.
• Despite recent hiring pauses, the long-term outlook for pilot demand remains positive due to upcoming retirements.
• Networking and building relationships within the aviation community is crucial for aspiring pilots seeking job opportunities.
• The potential for single-pilot operations in long-haul flights is being explored, although it's a complex issue.
• Alaska Airlines' recent acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines may lead to cultural shifts within both companies as they integrate.

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Jim Higgins, professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota.

Avia Nation what is going on?

And welcome back to the pilot to Pilot podcast.

My name is Justin seems and I am your host.

Today's episode is a state of the industry with Doctor Jim Higgins, and we really get into it.

We talk Alaska, we talk Hawaii, we talk mergers.

We talk failed mergers.

We talk hiring and anything and everything in between.

These are highly requested episodes and I'm looking forward to doing them more often.

I know I say that all the time.

I do think that we're going to be able to start churning these out every two weeks or maybe even sooner, depending on what's going on in the news.

So I appreciate you listening.

Please share this.

Please share these episodes with everyone you know.

Get more people aware of what's going on in the industry and asking more questions so we can try to answer everything.

A lot of the questions I get, some of them do have to do with international operations.

We don't necessarily have the best idea of what's going on outside of the United States.

It's kind of our specialization, so we hope to add that as well.

So stay tuned.

We'll see what we can do for you there.

The hat winners will be announced in my.

So make sure you go to Pilotspilot.

I'm going to announce all the hat winners.

Hopefully at the time that you're listening to this, we do.

We are giving away ten hats.

Just because you didn't win one on this try doesn't mean you're not going to win on the next one.

So how do you enter?

Go to pilotpilot Hq.com and you scroll down and join our newsletter.

We're hoping to have something pretty cool out here soon.

It's not your average newsletter and it's going to be something pretty awesome.

So I'm looking forward to that.

But aviation, I want to keep you any longer.

So any further ado, here's the state of the industry with Doctor Jim Higgins.

Jim, what's going on?

Welcome back to the pilot the pilot podcast.

Justin, always great to be here.

Thanks for having me back.

Yeah, it's been a couple weeks.

Been a couple months.

I've said this before, but I had training.

I was trying to figure out my life, how to get everything going.

But here we are in this beautiful aloft hotel right by LaGuardia.

Before we started recording, we were talking about your short time up here in LaGuardia and how you really miss it and what you're still doing.

Yes.

I lived in a crash pad with about eight other flight attendants and pilots just across the street from Runway LaGuardia.

Every morning I could look through the bars on my apartment we were renting.

Yeah, it wasn't, I don't know how it is now.

It was not the safest area, but the rent was right, you know, so that's how it worked.

It was very interesting to see a bunch of pilots and flight attendants, you know, occupy, you know, it's amazing how many people you can fit into a room.

I'm sure fire codes and whatnot were violated routinely.

But the price was right.

Yeah, it's one of those things just kind of you wonder, like why or how this became acceptable, and it just is what it is.

And for some reason, we just jam a bunch of pilots and flight attendants in this tiny little house or room.

And is it legal?

Is it not legal?

I don't know, but everyone just keeps their mouth shut because it's, it's the price is right.

And you want to make sure you don't spend money on hotel room like I'm doing right now when your crash bed doesn't have any room.

So, uh, short call reserve.

Yeah, it's it's definitely taking me some time to get used to it.

Quality of life with short call reserve when I don't live in New York isn't great.

If I lived in New York, it'd be amazing.

For the first half of the month, I didn't fly at all.

Probably had ten days on call in New York where I was just sitting in this hotel or sitting in the crash pad or going around the city.

So if you can live in base, people have told me this a million times, a living in base, it truly does make a world of a difference.

I've done both.

I've commuted for half my career and then I've lived in base for half my career.

And absolutely, there's a lot of hidden things when you can live in base too, that maybe you think about when you're a commuter.

One of the, in addition to what you're saying, your quality of life, your ability to handle reserve reserve actually becomes, in some cases a better assignment for you if you live in base than line flying.

But there's other little things too.

You know, I look at my wife who commutes and she bids, you know, you give up a lot of seniority.

I'm just going to estimate maybe ten to 20%.

Because if you're a commuter, you have to bid lines, obviously, that are commutable, and not all lines are built that way and not all pairings are built that way.

And so as a consequence, there may be, let's say, I'll give you, for instance, she really likes going on caribbean overnights in the winter, right?

But a lot of times those aren't uncommutable pairings.

And so because she doesn't live in base, she in essence, loses ten to 20% seniority and has to take what's available to her, which is generally about half the lines.

I'm sorry, about half the pairings.

And so, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of good things and bad things.

What I noticed when I, when I moved in base is my life just simplified.

It just, the stress level went way down.

I didn't have to worry about making it to work, you know, using the commuting policy, whatever the case may be, it just simplified.

Well, I can't even imagine what life was like without a commuting policy.

I mean, it was either.

Hey, this is your base.

You live in Raleigh Durham and you're based in New York.

It's like I don't really care how you get here, but you got a trip, you got an assignment, you gotta be here.

You miss it, we'll find someone else that can live in New York City.

You know, it was very brutal before the commuting provisions.

It was very brutal.

And I did operate in the time when we didn't have any kind of commuting provisions.

It all kind of came down to your chief pilot, and that's, that's the base chief pilot.

And if the base chief pilot was kind of a cool person and, you know, I mean, we had a chief.

I remember we had a chief pilot that would go out and fly the route for you if you were going to be late, if you're going to miss a turn.

Yeah, I mean, everyone loved him, but.

But not every, not everyone's like that, you know, and you're right, they're back then, they expected you, just like anywhere, they expect you to show up for work.

And they were pretty brutal about it, especially back when there were plenty of pilots to hire.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm just trying to think of right now of a chief pilot being like, no worries, man.

I got this trip for you.

I'd be like, oh, no, that's not good.

Be like, I'm on a bad list that do not want to be on.

And I'm guessing they made crazy overtime for flying that, but it's like, I don't know him to know that.

Well, let's kind of dig right into it.

No one really cares about my life on short call reserve anymore.

They're more interested.

Interested in what you have to say, what we have to say about what's going on in the airlines right now or just the aviation world in general.

One thing that we've talked about before is it's not necessarily the lack of pilots or the lack of needing to hire pilots.

It's really the lack of engines, it's the lack of airplanes, it's a lack of Boeing, Pratt and Whitney and engine manufacturers of delivering a product that's keeping the airlines from hiring.

Is that still what we're seeing?

Absolutely the case.

Certainly the consumer demand has been good.

The inflation has hit the airlines a little bit, but they've been able to counter that.

The rising expenses.

The big issue, of course, is, like you said, just the inability for plane deliveries.

Of course, it's most prolific with Boeing, but we also see some of that with Airbus.

And as you rightly mentioned, upstream, we're seeing, and it's not just engines, there's other critical parts, too.

But there's a big problem with engine deliveries.

It's just the supply chain.

And yeah, it's a big deal.

There's a lot of airlines that are waiting for the 321 Neos from Airbus that aren't being delivered on time.

And those are very fuel efficient, of course.

And so, yeah, there is a cascading effect.

I will say this, though, historically speaking, we still are seeing a healthy level of hiring.

I know for some people that were used to the way it was a year and a half, two years ago where everyone was getting hired and big tranches of people, it could be a little disheartening.

There's no doubt.

But if you go back historically, there were years where we didn't hire anyone.

And there are a lot of people on furlough, industry wide, we're still good.

Certainly there are some airlines that have stopped for the foreseeable future, and it might be a while, they might be a little overstaffed, but for the most part, we're still looking at the height of retirements coming up in the next couple of years.

And so I know for you, Justin, sitting on short call reserve, it's no fun.

We've all been there.

It literally is horrible.

We can't get that hiring to go fast enough.

But if you look at it, then it's easy for me to say because I'm not in the situation.

But if you look at it over the next two to three years, you're going to be fine.

And then you'll have those stories about all the young people getting hired and you'll say, hey, man, I paid my dues.

Yeah, no, for sure.

And what I think is really funny is me.

I don't even really want to say I'm complaining.

I'm just kind of stating the fact of where I am in my current journey of being at an airline.

It's like I feel like me, especially the younger generation, has really lost understanding of what it was like to be an airline pilot.

I should probably go tell some more of those stories so they can be like, dang, we actually have it pretty good right now, even if it has slowed, even if I am a CFI for an extra year, it used to be way, way worse.

And I'm not necessarily saying that we should suffer.

They should suffer because the past generation has suffered.

But I think it's kind of what you were saying how, like if you can take yourself out of the immediate year, six months or nine months, however long this is going to last, and kind of look at the broader picture, you're going to realize that overall you're still doing pretty well.

And a lot of DM's I get are from people that are like 22, 23 who have, what, 42 years possible for a career, quick math till 65.

I mean, if you don't get on at a major airline until you're 25, 26, I think you're still doing okay.

You know, it's a lot of people, I got hired at 34, I got hired at my last job at 28.

I mean, it takes time sometimes.

And the realistic timeline, maybe what we were seeing in the past isn't necessarily a realistic timeline forever, but I think it is going to go back to the way it was, maybe not en masse numbers, it might be a little bit more competitive.

But I definitely think that we're going to go back to where you're going to get a job pretty quickly, maybe not at the major airlines, but at least the regional airlines and other jobs as well.

No, I think that that's absolutely correct.

We've said this before, and I've said this for many, many years.

Whenever times are really good from a pilot perspective and there's lots of hiring going on, people think that's going to be the new normal forever.

And then whenever times are really bad and there's a lot of furloughs going on, a lot of people have hit the streets.

Everyone thinks, oh, this is the way it is, they'll never need another pilot.

And what we found over time is it's a term in statistics, right?

Everything regresses to the mean.

And the mean is there is a long term need for pilots structurally, just because of the retirements and the growth plans.

And so, yeah, we're going to see these fluxes where there's all kinds of hiring.

I mean, you remember right after the COVID pandemic hit and people were getting furloughed and there was all these concessionary contracts and there were early buyouts at the time, a lot of people were like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Is this still a good career?

I mean, that wasn't that long ago.

Right.

And you and I have had many conversations about that with pilots that have felt that way.

And then we went through this incredible upswing, and then now we're kind of back to, to where we still are historically high, but it's tough to ride that.

I often tell my students that this career is a little bit like that.

I think it's better than it was in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, where a lot of times you'd spend times on furlough strike or whatever, but there still are ebbs and flows, and for some people, it's not fun.

That's why we have to remind everyone, when you get into this profession, you have to get in this profession not necessarily for the money and the benefit and maybe even the lifestyle.

You got to get into it because you love flying.

It's got to be your passion.

That's the only way you're going to stick with it.

It's the only way, Justin, you're going to be stuck in a hotel waiting for the phone to ring over and over.

Why?

Because this is your life's passion.

This is what you want to do.

And the payoff down the road is going to be much better.

That's what I just want to remind everyone.

We have to ride those ebbs and flows.

It's not as bad as it used to be.

We still have a very bright future, and you got to get into flying for the right reason.

For sure.

It's hard to remember what those reasons are, especially when you're seeing what were newly hired Fo's at major airlines buying some pretty cool stuff or maybe spending recklessly to look cool on Instagram.

You know who you are.

You know who you are.

But I mean, it.

It's definitely in the past, it's been, you know, it's been a.

How do I say?

I can't remember the word I used to use.

But it's delayed gratification.

It's definitely been a delayed gratification career, similar to being a doctor, a lawyer.

You put in the work, and then you eventually it pays off, pay off your loans, and it takes a couple years, and.

And I think that's okay.

Then he took him ten years to flow.

You know, it's not like, I mean, the flow, I think, now is six to seven, maybe eight years, maybe a little bit less if things start picking up at certain spots.

Right.

Every airline is different.

Um, but I said it took him ten years to flow.

So he thought it was the worst possible time to get hired.

And he's like, I'm gonna get furloughed.

Like, this is the worst.

Like, I just got here.

So it's like, it's just insane.

Absolutely insane.

So just kind of pause a little bit on the freaking out and thinking that this career is over or it's going to take you 100 years, because it's probably not.

We just have to kind of enjoy where we are right now.

Whether that's being a CFI, whether that's aerial survey, which I know is hard, trust me, I did aerial survey.

It was not the most fun job in the world.

But there's me a time in your career where you're going to look back and you're like, man, I really wish I could fly a 172 again, or 206 or 210.

And you're going to think that when you're an airline pilot, you have a ton of money to go do that, but realistically, it's still very expensive and you're just not going to make time to do it.

So enjoy it while you can, because it's probably the last time you're ever going to fly those planes.

That's.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, you know, my wife and I are both pilots, and we thought many times about going out and buying an airplane, but like you said, because it would make sense for us, maybe.

But like you said, when you start, you know, looking at what that costs and, you know, you got kids coming up on college and pretty soon you're like, nah, I don't think that's going to work.

But, but, no, that's right.

That's good perspective.

I mean, you don't have to look much further.

I know at united they have what we call the double furlough ease.

Some cases, they were back at united for a very short time.

These folks, it'd be interesting to get their perspective on, you know, how things are going right now because, I mean, there's examples like that all over the industry where, let's be honest, Justin, a lot of it's luck.

Right?

What time when you graduate from your college, when you hit the industry, if you can get a job right away, flight instructing, whatever the case may be, you know, have you kept good, have you kept a good network?

Were you a decent human being, you know, during your training, where people's like, yeah, I know Justin, he's a great guy.

You know, those are the kind of things that kind of become important.

You know, maybe we lost sight of a little bit, but I.

But, yeah, I mean, it's still a great career.

I think if everyone just looks at it from a historical reason perspective, there's no reason to throw a panic button at all.

Just understand there's going to be natural ebbs and flows for sure.

Definitely.

And it feels like, to me, maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like those ebbs and flows have kind of shortened and they've been more.

They've increased where the ebbs are really, really good and the flows are really, really bad.

Like, this seems like the wave has kind of tightened up a little bit where before it was more like a more shallow, extended wave, but now it's just like, oh, good, oh, bad.

Oh, good, oh, bad.

All within such a short period of time.

That's also airline specific.

I mean, you look at spirit, they're actually furloughing, which is, you know, really sad to see.

Most companies have avoided that.

I'm sure some would like to furlough, but, like, you know, I think of FedEx because, you know, they've already stated they have an overage of pilots, but their contract makes it very difficult to furlough.

So for now, they're not furloughing, but for the most part, we're not seeing that.

You know, there was a time when, you know, every airline was furloughing, and, you know, that's, those are just really dark times when you, you see that.

That's for sure.

Of course, at american, and maybe there's some other places, too, you do have the flow back, or used to have the flow back, so that there was some furlough protection on there, part of the flow through.

And I remember that happened after 911.

There were several american airlines pilots came back to American Eagle, and they went right into the left seat of the CRJ 700, which was the biggest aircraft on the property at the time.

It wasn't what they were making at american, but at least they were able to pay their bills.

Yeah, had a job.

Right.

But then it just kind of keeps going down and down and down.

It's like, all right, well, now the new hire, the eagle, is getting furloughed.

So someone's eventually losing their job or getting furloughed.

It's not ideal in any way at all.

No, not at all.

And that did happen.

Yeah, we had about 200 and some furloughees that were out for quite a while.

So let's talk about one of the reasons that there is these hiring freezes or hiring pauses for at least the end of the year at most airlines.

A lot of this has to do with Boeing, and this is no shit.

I'm Boeing.

I'm nothing whistleblower.

So please, if you're listening this at Boeing, focus all your attention on Jim and not on me.

No, I'm just kidding.

But what's the latest at Boeing?

I mean, we seems like we have all these delays in manufacturing issues and everything that's going wrong.

And then now you add on top of that, strikes and building airplanes, and they announced the 797 is going to be built up in Washington.

But now they're like, what the heck?

Pay us more money.

So kind of give us a.

What's going on?

Give us the down low that, you know.

Well, I mean, it's kind of a perfect storm, right.

You know, and it's just, there's no way to put any kind of good spin on what's happened at Boeing.

I mean, you know, not to get way far afield, but I mean, you know, there's a couple astronauts on the International space Station that, you know, Boeing stranded, right.

That, I guess Elon Musk just, just launched a capsule yesterday or two days ago to go rescue them.

I mean, this is just not a good look for Boeing.

They do have a new CEO.

He did come in.

The first thing he did is he got rid of the commercial space head.

And a lot of people think that might be the beginning of change.

Time will tell.

They absolutely need to bring in a revolutionary, what we call a cultural revolutionary leader.

There's been a few of them in history that have come, and they just kind of insert their will and just say, look, we're going to get back to our proud tradition.

I do get asked, perhaps you get asked on occasion, is this the beginning of the end for Boeing?

The answer to that is absolutely not Boeing.

I mean, there's just not that many aircraft manufacturers in the world, right?

Boeing is not going anywhere.

Everyone knows it.

Don't think for a second if the CEO's at these major airlines, could go and say, doc, on it.

Boeing, you really upset us.

We're going to go put our big order in at Airbus.

You and I both know that's not going to happen.

There's no way to do that.

So they're the only rides in town.

They're your only dates to the dance.

So they're not going anywhere.

So that just means everyone has to focus and fix it.

And you are starting to see, like you saw Kirby from United put out a statement a couple weeks ago saying he has full confidence in Boeing, that they're making the changes.

I believe that he's sincere on that, but he really has no choice but to say that.

Right?

Same with the other CEO's.

They have to say that because there's no one else to do it.

Is the government going to take it over?

How well would that work?

Can you imagine the government running an aircraft?

I just couldn't even imagine.

So they're going to get it right.

It's just going to take some time.

But you are right, this has absolutely caused tremendous problem in terms of hiring, expansion, growth, places like united, american, Delta.

They would absolutely.

There is opportunity out there.

We are seeing some weakening in the low cost carrier segment with JetBlue and spirit, of course, and we're seeing that there might be some opportunities opening up.

These airlines, the big legacy ones, would love to go in and fill some of that.

There's some good opportunity there for them, but they're not able to.

Right now, what you are seeing is you're seeing some down gauging quite a bit, actually, where three, four years ago, where you would see regional jets on a route, you are starting to see some of the smaller mainline aircraft on those same routes.

So you're starting to see a lot of bandwidth put into that.

But as soon as the floodgates open, as soon as the strike that Boeing is experiencing is solved, hopefully that's soon, you will start seeing some movement.

But you're still probably a year, year and a half away from any meaningful culture change.

There still are deliveries going on, just so everyone understands.

They're just much slower than what people, what people were hoping for.

But the 737s are still being delivered at, the 787s are still trickling.

The neos are still trickling as well.

So, I mean, there are some things that are coming out.

And the 797, I mean, it's great to put that on paper, but I mean, it's going to be a little.

While before a decade away, unless they've been working on in secret that we don't know.

Yeah, right.

I did think it was interesting that they chose to Renton or Seattle area again, because that's a unionized workforce.

I'm surprised that they weren't going to go back down to Charleston, where it is, non unionized workforce down there, and they can kind of do what they want to do down there, you know, but it's definitely good for the Pacific Northwest that they're going to be building it back up there.

It was just interesting on their, their choice to do that, and then the strike happens right after that.

Maybe that was kind of like their show of goodwill.

It's like, hey, we're going to take care of you.

We're to make sure you can build this airplane.

We're going to pay you less, but we're still going to have a job to build this airplane.

Right.

Well, it's interesting.

I mean, again, I have no inside information on this, and I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on Boeing.

They say they're going to build it in the Pacific Northwest.

I don't, you know, is there, you know, that can maybe be part of the contract negotiations with the labor union up there, you know, some kind of letter of intent or something.

But I mean, it's, you know, they can, they can go wherever they need to go.

They could go to, I mean, I don't think it would ever happen, but they could go elsewhere if they, they wanted to, even offshore for a lot of it.

So that being said, yeah, that's great to hear, and it is good for the Pacific Northwest.

Look, when you hear the word Boeing, everyone thinks Boeing field in Seattle, everyone thinks about their big facility there.

Certainly a lot of stuff going on in South Carolina, and they've done tremendous things down there as well.

That being said, it is just from those that are affectionate of the history of aviation, it is good to see some stuff being mentioned about where Boeing all started.

Absolutely.

Then what kind of transition to the ultra low cost carriers, which you mentioned a little before.

What's going on there?

What's the latest?

Well, we're starting to see some pressure starting to unravel.

I don't want to use the word expose, but I think some of what was relied upon in the past by some of these ultra low cost carriers.

For instance, look at JetBlue.

I don't know.

I call them an ultra low cost, but I certainly would call them a low cost carrier.

I mean, there's differing definitions out there.

We are starting to see them shrink in some areas, and it's a concept known as shrink to profitability.

When you're a little too extended, it's very expensive to run an airline.

You have assets all over the place.

You have employees all over the place.

Even if you outsource, you got your parts, your equipment, it's just ad nauseam the amount of expenses that accrue.

And so one of the ways you can get back to profitability is you can shrink back to the routes that, you know, you're doing well at where you have a lot of your critical infrastructure.

What an economist would call an economy of density, it's called an economy.

Instead of an economy of scope, it's called an economy of density.

And where you have those dense functions that will help you make money.

And so that's what they're doing.

It's probably going to make the shareholders happy.

You know, you're seeing a little bit with Southwest as well because Southwest has got their own issues with the, you know, with the minority owner.

That's, yeah, yeah, that's true.

Yeah, that's, you know, but they did just agree to bring the ex spirit CEO on the board I saw the other day.

So.

Yeah.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Do you want the ex spirit CEO?

Like, I mean, I'm no shade on him, but how does spirit, how is spirit left?

You know, it's, it's interesting.

I thought this, I had the same thought.

Not going to lie, Justin, when I read that as well.

I think the concept is, is they're trying to bring, well, you know, these boards are interesting.

If you look at boards in any organization around the, around the country, any Fortune 500 company, whether they're an airline or not, the boards are often filled politically.

Right?

Like, I remember one time at American Airlines, I'm sure he's not still on there, but I remember looking at the board, you know, Roger Staubach was on there, right?

He was a great, great quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys.

But I mean, what does he know about running an airline, right?

No, no shade on Roger Staubach.

He went to the Naval Academy.

I'm sure he's a very, very bright guy.

But my point is, you do see that a lot.

And then also you will see professional board sitters.

These are people that will just sit on several boards across several industries, and that's kind of what they do.

Ironically, you see the lot with college professors, a lot of college professors out there.

That's kind of their later career.

They'll just go because they're not very controversial, but they're well known in their industry and they'll go and sit on several things.

These aren't always the best business minded people that will help help shape the overall strategy.

And so the concept at Southwest, at least through their group, that's driving everything.

I forget their name, but I think you just said it.

But by bringing in these airline type folks, the idea at least is as you get a board that understands, that's been there, that maybe will have a little more salient advice and demand things to hold their executives a little more accountable.

I don't know, but I think that's the theory anyway.

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And now back to today's episode.

And going back to JetBlue a little bit.

Do you think JetBlue is on a path that's similar to spirit?

Do you think that they're, they're different and what their outcomes will come?

Because it just seems like every single time I read something about JetBlue, it's a little bit worse and a little bit worse and a little bit worse.

I'm not sure if they're kind of on a bad path or bad trajectory.

I mean, it's obviously not a great one.

But do you see them being a similar outcome to what we're looking at as spirit, or do you think they have a much better standing business model that they're going to be okay?

JetBlue will be fine.

Certainly there's going to be some local.

The strength to profitability is a real thing.

I know it sounds like a talking point, maybe that someone's trying to put a spin on something bad, but it really is a well known phenomenon, especially with airlines.

Anything that has assets that are spread out geographically, it's a well known concept.

I think JetBlue is going to be fine.

They're actually very well managed.

They're taking these moves a little proactively.

But let's make no mistake, I do think that JetBlue and Spirit got a really raw deal from the government when they were not allowed to merge.

Now, I don't know if that merge would have been successful or not.

You and I have talked about this before.

Sometimes mergers don't work well at all, and it causes a net, very big net negative.

Oftentimes, though, you get the best of both.

If it's done well, you can get a very good result.

And we've certainly seen that.

That being said, they never were given a chance, which was, you know, again, it came down to the judge, and, you know, I'm not trying to get political here, and I could care less one's politics, but no offense to the judge that decided to uphold the DOJ's ruling on this, but what does a federal judge know about running an airline and about the airline industry?

Literally, he said, this will be better for consumers.

Well, we're now seeing that that's not the case, that this is really too bad.

Interestingly enough, you have Alaska now that's purchasing Hawaiian that's been approved, which is really interesting.

So when you go and you look at that and you can say, well, those are two very, very dissimilar operations.

Well, certainly geographically, yes, absolutely.

They cover a lot of different geography.

However, that West coast is, you can make an argument that West coast is going to get saturated.

And if you were going to go back to the old JetBlue spirit complaint from the DOJ, where consumers will be disadvantaged in certain markets, how could you not say the same thing about the west coast for an Alaska hawaiian merger?

I think this is my own personal belief.

I have no inside knowledge on this, but I think that the government, the DOJ, realized they were a little too heavy handed on the JetBlue spirit thing, because when you look at the size of Alaska and Hawaiian, it's very similar to the same size that the combined JetBlue spirit would have been.

Almost the same number of aircraft, almost same number of departures.

Revenue figures are pretty close.

I mean, you can't say the only thing that's dissimilar is where they primarily operate.

But again, if you live in Los Angeles, you're going to have less consumer options available after this merger goes through.

And that was exactly what the DOJ said was the problem with JetBlue spirit is the east coast is going to get saturated.

So my question for the bureaucrats that are making these decisions and deciding what airlines get to thrive and which ones don't, what's the difference between a west coast consumer and an east coast consumer?

Right now, I haven't looked at this granularity with a lot of granularity, so maybe there are some differences I don't recognize, but to me, it doesn't really pass the smell test.

I'm happy that Alaska and Hawaiian are allowed to merge.

I think that's probably the correct decision.

But it really, I really scratched my head about Jetblue spirit now because that doesn't seem, it just seems like they just didn't get a fair shake.

Yeah.

Is, is this something, this might be a dumb question, but is this something that they could go back and, like, revisit, be like, hey, you just, you just approve of this, and it's not much different than what we wanted to do.

And clearly your decision has hurt both of our airlines.

It's, can we do this again?

Or would that just take way too much money to go back into down that road code?

Yeah.

Just even exploring a merger is really expensive for a company.

It's not just the legal bills and the lobbying bills and the time.

You literally have to take about a third of your management team away from both carriers and they have to work out the merger plan.

And it's just even initially can be very, very distracting.

In fact, if you go back and I haven't.

I should do this, I should see if we can plot some data on this.

But if you go back at failed mergers, mergers that were not allowed, that were first proposed, I think United us Air was one that was proposed many, many years ago, and it was not allowed, it would be interesting to see what the financial net effects were because a lot of us in the industry feel that after a failed merger, there's almost always a dramatic impact on the carriers that failed.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying it's completely caused by the lack of merger, but one of the thoughts in the industry is, and I've read this before and I've heard this from my friends that work in the industry, there's a huge distraction cost that everyone went through all this distraction cost, and now they got to go back to whatever they were doing.

And certainly there could be a lot of lost opportunities.

While you were busy trying to merge, your competitors were solidifying.

It certainly has a dramatic effect.

Yeah, it distracts you.

You're distracted on this one overall goal, and you're like, well, hey, we'll worry about getting a new route some other time, or we'll worry about southwest doing that.

We'll worry about that in a year.

We get this going on, you know, and that sets you back another year.

And playing catch up is never fun.

You got to come up with something new.

That's right.

So, yeah, I could definitely see that.

And then another question I had is, let's say it did go through.

Would you see a world where they would not be struggling right now, or do you think that you mentioned that not all mergers are good mergers?

Do you see a similar play out where they would merge, but it would still be a tough road for both of them to become one?

That's a really good question, and it's complete speculation.

Nobody knows the answer to that.

Certainly the people at both JetBlue and spirit did their due diligence and thought that there'd be a net positive for sure.

And I will say, in recent years, mergers have been.

There's a science to them now, and mergers have gone better more recently than they have in the past.

So if you told me I have to make a beta on a combined JetBlue spirit consortium syndicate and tell me if it's going to be a lot more profitable.

It's the synergy.

Are they better together than they were as a sum of their parts?

I would say yes, probably they would have.

They at least would have had a fighting chance to not be in where they're at now.

Would it have prevented the furloughs?

The truth is, the type of passenger that a spirit of and a jetBlue rely on is a different type of passenger than, say, an American or a delta rely on, in the sense that they're a lot more what we call price inelastic.

In other words, those passengers are a lot more sensitive to price.

And so we did see a weakening, and we are seeing a weakening in that.

And so because of that, you know, that's the wild card in all this.

Would that have impacted the combined carrier enough to still cause problems?

I mean, it's like this.

Would it have been a home run, you know, grand slam, walk off everything great?

Probably not.

Would it have been incrementally better?

That's my guess.

What would have still happened long term to the carrier?

That's still a question mark.

And when we see two airline struggle that are ultra low cost or low cost, do you think the kind of legacies of the majors look at that and see that as an opportunity to kind of go after them even more?

I know they have their own issues right now, but it seems like there's an opportunity for them to maybe either recap, capture some of that market or take some passengers away from them.

Do you see that happening?

Absolutely.

There's absolutely no doubt that that's going on.

The CEO's of the major legacies have all said they would hate to be a low cost carrier right now.

I mean, those are some direct quotes because they feel the business model is getting exposed.

Again, I don't think a frontier or a spirit or even a JetBlue, they're going to go anywhere, but they could look different in a year or two.

They are going to have to figure their way out.

But if you recall, frontier was through Indigo.

They were going to basically double or triple in size with their Airbus order.

A lot of these things are not so clear anymore about this prolific growth.

Even a year and a half ago, Justin, myself included, we thought that this low cost carrier, they were immune to downturns in the industry because of their ability to generate ancillary income and just the ability to operate a cost model that was congruent with profitability.

But we're seeing that maybe that's not the case.

Maybe there aren't as many passengers as they thought.

Perhaps that's a function of the inflation causing consumer demand to go down a little bit.

Not to make this an economics class, but there certainly was some upward pressure on pricing and a lot of people couldn't afford what they could have even a year prior.

And for the types of passengers that are targeted by these low cost carriers, they're very price sensitive, as I said.

And so that very much could have a pretty profound effect.

Yeah.

And one airline that I don't think we've ever really talked about before.

So welcome to the show.

But breeze, you mentioned before we started recording that they're starting to show some profits and they're starting to make a little bit of a name for themselves and the markets they are in.

And obviously, they're not going to be everywhere.

I mean, I don't see them very often.

You hear them every once in a while.

But what do you got on breeze?

Well, you know, they're founded by Neilman, who founded JetBlue, who before that.

And he also founded carriers both in Brazil and up in Canada before that.

But then, of course, he was known as Morissera, which was eventually purchased by Southwest.

Look, this, you asked me this years ago, what do I think of breeze?

I said I would never count Nealman out.

I mean, the guy is, he does things that are unconventional.

I mean, just look at what Breeze is doing.

They're doing hub bypass.

They're doing point to point with the 220, which is a highly fuel efficient aircraft.

He was interviewed the other day saying that he's not having problems finding pilots.

I don't know.

I mean, I guess we'll see how that bears out in the future.

I know he has to say that, but they are turning a profit.

And again, if you look at a traditionally run airline, even a traditionally run low cost carrier, what breeze is doing should not work.

If you operate under those business models, it should not work.

There should not be enough passengers to go.

I forget some of the routes, but there some really interesting routes where you just kind of hub bypass these cities that are medium sized.

And, you know, I'm trying to think of them maybe like Omaha to, I don't know, like Charleston, South Carolina.

You know, there's enough passengers that want to take that, but, you know, you know, there's enough pastors that don't want to go through Minneapolis or Chicago or Dallas or whatever.

They'll take that slightly, maybe just a slightly higher fare.

Breeze is trying to call themselves a luxury low cost carrier.

I don't know if you've heard that.

Sounds like the marketing team there got together.

I don't know.

When you look at some of the international business classes on the legacy, it's going to be tough for a 220 to compete with that.

That being said, I wouldn't count this guy out.

The fact that he's turning a profit already to me is pretty interesting and he's got growth.

But again, it's the southwest problem as well.

Ultimately, how many of these little city pairs that are underserved, existential, you know, and is the competition just going to sit by and let that happen?

You know, I mean, are they going to just let, let him peel away some of that market share?

I guess the other question is, are these passengers that would not have flown except for the fact that breeze exists in their market?

I don't know.

And so we'll find out.

But again, if I was a betting person, I would not bet against this guy.

He knows how to build airlines.

He just knows how to do it.

It's fascinating the brain that you can have to have different business strategies and be like, hey, well, this worked, but I think I can do this a little bit differently, make it work for them.

What do you see?

Do you think they're going to be a prime kind of, I want to say startup, but airline that gets bought out for aircraft or pilots and if they continue to be a little bit profitable.

You know, like you said, they could compete.

They could kind of, kind of stomp their foot down on them and force them into a corner.

Or do you see someone like, I don't know, this is kind of crazy, but like Southwest or even jetBlue, uh, frontier, any of those are trying to be like, hey, you know, this is working.

We need pilots, we need airplanes.

Um, they're showing that they can create a good profit this way and let's try our luck that way.

Yeah.

The only, the only thing that's a little bit different here is the route structure.

And the, the way that the, the anti hubbing or the dehubbing works at breeze is unlike a lot of the, the legacy carriers.

So it would be a difficult consolidation, in my opinion.

I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it'd be difficult.

Maybe you would see a little more on the low cost carrier side that maybe kind of do similar things, you know, to that, but, but let's take a look.

Even like an allegiant, I mean, it's still outstation to, like, major hubs like Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix, you know, and so that's a different business model.

So I don't know.

I mean, I don't know.

Any, anytime an airline's profitable and it looks like they're going to be profitable for a while.

So certainly just by that reason alone, they do become kind of a candidate for an acquisition or a merger of some sort.

But when you look at it operationally, it may be a little more difficult than previous mergers.

But again, I don't know, it'd be interesting to be a fly on the wall in Neilman's office.

I mean, this could be a labor of love for him.

This could be something he wants to build.

Remember, JetBlue is created by him the day after his non compete agreement expired at Southwest, literally the day after JetBlue launched.

And it was a ten year non compete, if I remember, after he left.

And so I don't know, wherever he goes, he seems to make a lot of interest and JetBlue is still surviving on his own.

So I don't know.

My guess is if I know him, he wants to create some kind of a lasting legacy.

Huge carrier, but we'll see.

Yeah, absolutely.

Time will tell.

We mentioned Alaska, Hawaii a little bit, but let's talk more specifically about them.

What do you think the reason why Alaska really wanted to buy Hawaii?

I mean, this is their second merger in what, ten years, I'd say.

Right.

Yeah.

Virgin.

Do you think this is the end?

Do you think they're going to try to find someone else to.

I don't know who else they could.

But what's the end goal here?

Well, certainly the time honored.

So in my opinion, Alaska Airlines, their management philosophy, and I have met some of their higher management in the past, they are known to be a conservatively run airline.

Right.

And so there's some good things with that.

Even during downturns, they still tend to churn out some profitability.

There's really not been furloughs.

They've done a good job.

So it'd be like if you were to invest, if you're a stock buyer and you want to buy an airline that has a little bit more of a safe record, they would be, when you're, they'd be more of a value type stock that you would, you would put your money in.

But they also traditionally grow through consolidation, mergers, which is also, it's like the eighties called.

Right.

They kind of want their business plan back.

That's kind of the way they operate.

But it really works for them.

It really works for them because they do these large jumps.

The question for Alaska, and I think there's a lot of upside to Alaska because even though they do fly out east now, they do find some eastern cities, they still have a tremendous amount of territory that they can grow into and connect their network to.

And so I think it's generally positive.

The question to answer what you're saying is would they look at some kind of an acquisition out east to bolster their west coast operations or Midwest operations?

That's a very good question, and that's something that we'll have to watch.

But they've certainly shown a propensity to grow through acquisition, which, by the way, is one of the fastest ways to grow.

Right.

If you pull your merger off correctly, it's a very fast way to grow.

And their last merger went swimmingly, went great.

It didn't really cause any problems like we've seen at other carriers.

My guess is you will see Alaska continue to be Alaska and look for opportunities in certain areas to acquire and grow.

Yeah.

And one thing I do know about the Alaska Virgin merger is that there are two culturally different airlines, and I feel like that's the same with Hawaii.

And I don't think the pilots or the employees necessarily of the older airlines that got bought out by Alaska appreciate the new culture that they're coming into just because it's so different.

Like you said, very, very more conservative and how they run things.

And I willing to see, I'm really interested to see how that's going to play out because Hawaii is a very specific culture and it works because they're serving Hawaiians essentially.

You know, they do obviously have some big routes out of the lower 48, but they are there for hawaiian culture and they're there for Hawaii.

And I'll be really interested to see how they play with that.

I mean, I don't.

They might have announced this by now, but it's like, are they going to fully rebrand everything as Alaska?

Are all their big, wide bodies gonna have Alaska on?

And now it's just gonna be really interesting to see how the island really kind of of takes onto that.

And does that make bigger growth for other airlines now that they don't feel like they're flying on their flag carrier per se?

That's going to be really interesting.

You know, you saw a little bit of that with the United Continental merger and a little bit of that with the Delta northwest merger.

The truth is the surviving carrier, sometimes it's kind of done more for the internal cultural stuff.

So, for instance, at Unitedhe, the name United survived.

But if you look at the aircraft, they're still painted like continental planes were, you know, and so you will see some things like that.

Certainly in this case, Alaska is the surviving.

You know, they're going to be, they're the ones acquiring.

So my guess is everything gets branded to Alaska, you know, again, I could be wrong, but that would be my guess as quickly as possible.

Culturally, there's definitely going to be some cultural shift.

You know, people, the way things are done locally, maybe at some of the Alaska out stations and training and whatnot, that's going to change over time.

My guess is the Alaska folks learn quite a bit from their mergers in the past, and so they're going to know, I would think, what temperature to keep it lukewarm, not too hot, not too cold to find that right zone to bring everyone on board.

But again, we'll see.

Just keep in mind, Alaska, this is the same airline.

Now, I know they don't do this anymore, but I remember talking to an Alaska recruiter in the early two thousands, and they told me that one of the things they did, they had an essay.

So pilots had to hand write an essay.

Me either, but they had a handwriting essay.

But one of the automatic rejects was if you wrote the word Alaskan Airlines because they felt that you didn't understand, it's kind of like the Delta Air lines thing versus the one word thing.

But in Alaska, they took it to a pretty big extreme.

And if you wrote that on your essay, alaskan, that was an automatic, we're not gonna hire you because you shouldn't.

Yeah.

To me, little things like that, I mean, they're not little things that people, it's just, it's really taking yourself pretty seriously, and it is kind of a cultural thing.

And I can understand having pride in your organization.

But, see, I wonder how, and I don't think they do that kind of stuff anymore, but I wonder how something like that would play with a more contemporary group of pilots coming in.

And in this age where there's not as many pilots available, especially going forward, I don't know, it'll be interesting.

So the point is, is that's kind of how strict the company was known to be.

They're kind of, kind of like that.

And so, you know, the question is, what's going to prevail?

Is it going to be, and again, I'm not trying to stereotype Alaska or hawaiian, but Hawaiian was definitely known to be a little more of a chill, you know, vibed airline, and Alaska's not.

And so it'll be kind of interesting to, to see how that makes us definitely will.

There's a lot of timelines that we need to pay attention to to see how they play out.

A failed merger, a successful merger, retirements and hiring Boeing, Airbus engines.

Plans are to hire to be profitable.

Obviously, there's still, as an investor, I'm sure they're still a little wary of how is this all going to happen?

How are you going to hire, how are you going to do this?

Yeah.

You will see a good correction.

You will see some positive flow.

But you will start seeing some, you're already seeing some semblances of positive signs.

You're also going to see a lot of the retirements kick in at a lot of the legacies so I do.

That would be my prediction.

It'll be interesting to revisit this and come back and see.

You're going to start seeing a lot of hiring again.

Yeah, let's hope so.

That'd be great.

Great for my, my seniority.

Right.

I did ask a couple questions, so we will answer a few of these.

It's hard for me to read these, but let's see what we got.

I just had one Airbus.

They are currently in the process of pushing, I would say, of showing that the idea of single pilot is closer than you would want to think.

And they're really kind of pushing it for wide body long hauls right now.

Where do you think we stand with that?

Well, Boeing also, you and I have talked about before, they did initially indicate they may offer something similar on the 797 when it rolls out, some kind of a single pilot package.

Look, it's a problem.

It's certainly a problem from a pilot point of view, from a regulatory point of view.

It's going to be, I would say, a decade or two away in the United States where you're going to start seeing it is you'll start seeing it on freight long haul for augmented operations.

You know, you're going to start seeing what's with the concepts known as remote pilot monitoring.

And so what's being bantered about, and I think we've talked about this before, but what's being bantered about is this concept that you get an aircraft that, quote, unquote, is certified, like this new Airbus or the 797 or maybe retrofitted 787 or something that's certified.

And so instead of having the augmented crew, you have one person sitting on the flight deck.

And then the thought process is there's a remotely, there's somebody back at a ground control station back in SLC or whatever.

That's basically the pilot monitoring for several aircraft, maybe 510 aircraft.

This is the thought tree right now for this.

And then if an emergency occurs, there's obviously a lot of training that has to play out.

But the pilot on board monitors that with the help of the remote pilot.

In the meantime, there's some kind of procedure to bring the sleeping pilot, which, by the way, I think has tremendous physiological issues, bring a sleeping pilot from a dead sleep into a full blown emergency.

But whatever, that, that all has to be worked out, I guess.

But this is the thought, this is the current thought process.

So you're going to see it very subtly.

It's not going to be a light switch, as I said before, where one day we're down to single pilot operations, you're going to start seeing it on the periphery, in my opinion, it'll be long haul freight, where there aren't passengers involved, and it'll be with the augmented operations.

And then once, once, and if that's allowed, and if that's showing for a couple years, to operate problem free, then you'll start seeing the airlines push that again.

I mean, I don't know if you've been in the Bay Area, I was just in San Francisco, and I mean, we couldn't get in Waymo, one of those self driving cars because there was too long of a list and they just released some statistics that.

But it's three times less likely to be involved in a fender bender down there with the self driving cars.

You see them all over the place now in San Francisco.

So we are seeing a societal shift towards that.

And so once that becomes more mainstream with these incoming generations, I think people will probably be a little more accepting of being able to fly with a single pilot.

So I think 20 years from now, two decades from now, I think it is possible.

And I know my friends at Alpa are going to be upset at me for saying this, because they should fight the good fight.

And we need to make sure there's a lot of, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered.

But I think 20 years from now, you will start seeing some, some single pilot operations in certain conditions will become a lot more, you know, a lot more prevalent.

Yeah.

And when we talk about long haul freight, I know FedExes would love that.

They could be like, hey, come on, please throw it on one of our planes.

I'm sure Ups would too.

But especially with how the FedEx and the union and their negotiations are going, they would love the opportunity to pass something like that right now.

Yep.

And they have, I know for a fact of FedEx, and certainly I'm sure ups, they have stood up a business unit there.

That is for automation, automated flying, and, you know, it's at the managing director level.

I don't think it's gotten to the VP level yet, but that, that tells you they are putting resources and they're hiring, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got another question.

Now.

It doesn't necessarily need to get political, but the question itself is, is this election influencing what's going on in the industry right now?

Do you think that some of this has to do with an industry cycle, or do you think it's more of just a wait and see of who's going to get hired and how it's going to play out?

That's a really good question.

I don't have any particular insight into that.

The only thing I would say is that if you go back historically and you look at elections, they don't tend to, there doesn't tend to be any kind of a correlation between industry performance and an election.

You could certainly say that there have been some presidencies that were considered to be more favorable to managements or to labor, for instance, over the years.

So maybe there's been some correlation there.

But what I will tell you, I will say one quick thing, and this is not being political.

When Trump was first elected, I was on an industry working group, and our goal was to reduce general aviation accidents.

That basically was our stated goal.

And so I was on this loss.

It was called the loss of control working group.

And it was with a bunch of people.

You know, academia was there, but it was industry, FAA.

And I remember this mandate came down that said, hey, the FAA no longer wants to really write rules.

They don't want to write regulations per se.

The new philosophy is they're going to deregulate, they want the industry and academia and, you know, the FAA folks, to kind of work out their own solutions, you know, and I remember thinking myself, I wonder how this is going to work.

And again, I'm not making a political statement, but I will tell you, I do think it's a better result when all the players, all the people that participate in the industry kind of get to make their own rules and enforce their own rules, then when the government, in this case, the FAA, comes in and says, okay, this is our new rule, because, let's be honest, look at next gen, right?

What the promise of this next gen that just has not come to fruition.

And in my opinion, it's because it's kind of been stuck, you know, in the FAA.

And in addition, I would say, look at unmanned systems or uncrewed systems right now.

Again, we're being dealt a pretty big blow worldwide.

We're not keeping pace with it.

So I do think that the philosophy of deregulating, which seems scary at first, does seem to work.

And I have noticed both candidates now are saying that if you listen to their messages, both candidates now, I will say Trump did it because I was part of it.

He did it.

Say what you want, but I have noticed that Kamala Harris is also saying we need less regulation as well.

And so that's kind of interesting that no matter who gets in there, you know, we'll see if people keep their promises, but no matter who gets in there, they're both kind of saying the same thing.

Yeah.

The really interesting part to me with that is it all sounds great at first.

Like you said, it's a little scary at first.

And it might work for our first couple of years until the airlines are like, you know, we're pretty safe.

Do we really need this regulation?

Like, we could all make another billion dollars just by saying, hey, we don't need to do 250 under ten.

I mean, that's just like a.

I can't think anything else.

Good example.

Yeah.

If they just change something just because, you know, this hasn't ever caused an accident, so the chances of it actually happening.

But that's just a slippery slope where, I mean, we've seen it with Boeing where they choose profits over.

Over safety, and I just kind of see that turning into me an issue.

That's the fear, that's the risk.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, we'll see.

It's all cycle, right?

Like, when we go the cycles of over regulation, and then now we're going down, it's like we have too much.

We need to deregulate, and then you get like, all right, we need more regulation.

Someone help me, please.

Please.

But we can't do this on our own.

So, yeah, it's, uh.

I just wish we could live, like, in a little meat happy medium place with just little ebbs and flows, but it's not like, stop, go, stop, go.

Uh, anyways, absolutely.

Another question we have is when do you predict the regionals will be hiring in and what kind of happened?

Um, I.

Me personally, I think it all relies on the majors.

I think that there's the whole, it's kind of like, think of the major league, major league baseball.

You have all these systems to get up to the top leagues, and that's exactly what's going on and is when the top stops taking from the bottom.

There's me, a backlog in the bottom.

And right now, there's just too many pilots that they're waiting to go to the top, but that flow and, and the hiring and getting up there is kind of slow.

So it all depends on what's going on with the majors.

Do you see the same.

That is absolutely correct.

And then there's also a little bit of a spot difference as well.

We are seeing a lot of low cost carrier pilots, even people that have been there for five years or so, plus that are coming over to united, american delta.

We didn't really see that in the past.

And so I think then that gives kind of a temporary lull then on the regionals that feed in, like the United carriers, the american carriers, the delta carriers, they are kind of having to kind of wait in place.

And also, as we all know, the shortage at the regionals right now is with the captains, also with the line check airmen.

That's a big, big problem at a lot of those places.

That's why you're seeing people just make a lot of money in those positions.

More than major, for whatever reason.

Yeah.

Well, when you get your czech airmen letter at a regional, it's almost like.

It's almost like chumming the water.

It's almost, almost instantaneously.

If you have your applications out at Delta, American United, it's almost an instant call.

And so we've talked about this before, but it takes a long time to hatch check airmen.

I mean, I went through the check airmen process at American Eagle, now envoy, and it took every bit of six months, but because you have to get all kinds of sign offs and training, and then you have to be observed by the FAA.

And, I mean, that's, you know, it just.

It takes a.

Takes a lot.

And so then all of a sudden, to lose that person, you know, a month or two later, you know, it really causes a backlog.

So.

So, yeah, and I think you, with the down gauging at the main lines now going into a lot of the previous regional markets, I mean, my wife had a.

An overnight in Traverse city the other day, and she hadn't, she hadn't flown there since her.

Since her regional days.

And so, I mean, it just kind of shows you how things are kind of changing a little bit.

Absolutely.

Here's a good one to end on.

It's.

How competitive do you think hiring will be once it resumes?

I kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, but what do you think?

Okay.

So that means, you know, do the best you can with your checkrides, do the best you can with building your records, do the best you can, make sure you stay out of trouble, you know, traffic wise, DuI wise, do everything you can to put yourself in the best position.

And then what will happen then is there will be opportunity for you.

If you do everything you're supposed to do, you'll have good opportunity.

If you take a different route, an alternative route where maybe you have some, some issues in there, then it might be a little, you're going to see the airlines will be, they will have a little bit more ability to, you know, before, I'm not saying to say they took everybody, but their net was a lot wider.

Right.

If you didn't, you maybe would have to pick your spots.

So I'm still very bullish on the industry.

From a hiring perspective, I think it's.

Good, good to say.

And then I also think it's good to say, make sure you're networking and being involved and they kind of go hand in hand.

The more involved you are, the bigger your network gets and the more people you get to meet.

So don't just be okay with maybe just flying at a regional.

Like, hey, if you want to go somewhere else, you're going to have to meet more people than just the people you fly with.

You're going to have to go to events, you know, maybe hang out at your local airport.

Look how you can be more involved in things that matter to you.

Could be in the union, it could be in the airline, could be in a lot of things.

But widen your network because you never know who you will meet and be like, hey, yeah, dude, I am the head of hiring at Delta.

I got you, you know, or I'm the head of hiring an american.

You're great.

You're exactly what we want.

Or they can tell you, hey, you need this, this and this.

And then this is the secret to get, you know, it's just widen your network, do more than you think you should.

It's your dream job, right?

So do everything you can to get there.

Sacrifice a little bit in the meantime.

So you can live the life that you want.

Yeah.

Super good advice.

Absolutely good advice.

Put yourself in the best possible position and networking.

I just, I've never heard a bad story from someone that's networked.

The worst thing that's going to happen to you is you're going to get a lot of friends, you're going to get a lot of people that you can bounce decisions off of, decisions you have to make off of.

Get some advice from.

That's the worst thing that's going to happen.

The best thing that's going to happen is exactly what you say.

There's going to be more opportunity for you and.

Absolutely right.

I guess I have one more question, but it has to do with this.

Someone asked, do you think you'll ever see the airlines require a four year degree again, I would say probably not.

On paper, however, I do think it's still a, if you don't have a four year degree, you can certainly get hired at a major airline.

We've seen that.

And I think going forward you probably will still see those opportunities.

However, you will likely have to have something else that's kind of big, that kind of offsets that I know for a while.

United before they, before they dropped that, even when they, even when they did drop it, if you didn't have a four year degree, they wanted to see something pretty big.

Like, I know if you were like a chief pilot at a regional, for instance, that was something that they, that they would say, okay, that that's good.

You don't have to have a four year degree.

You've demonstrated, you've demonstrated that or something like that, you know, and so if you have something that kind of offsets that, that's going to really help.

But certainly I do not think you'll ever see a written minimum out there that says that you have to have a four year degree.

Yep.

Agreed.

I don't think they'll ever require it ever again, but I think it will be highly recommended.

And I think that will ebb and flow with how the market and pilots and what they need.

When they have a bigger pool, they're going to want to see more.

And will that mean a four year degree?

I would say yes, just because it shows that you can get things done.

You can commit to something for four years, you can put in the work, you can get it done.

And essentially it's them thinking that they can trust you.

Fly 200 people because you've done hard things before and you've passed, you've overcome a diversity.

You passed that's not to say you don't overcome adversity by not going to school.

You definitely do.

But it's, it's unfortunately just a way for them to.

It's just another metric for them to see.

And if you look at studies, I'm sure it shows nine or 55% of people have four year degrees do better than this.

I mean, it's just unfortunate.

That's just what they believe.

So I do think that it's going to be recommended and sometimes will be highly recommended, but I don't think it's going to be a killer for anyone.

Like you said, if you have something that helps you stick out, then I think you'll be okay.

But at some points, you're, you're probably.

I think you should err on getting that degree.

If I agree.

There's one other little nuance, too.

And it may not seem like much, but, but later on in a person's career, if they don't have that college degree, but they still make it to a major airline, you know, if you want to go do something at that major airline, like maybe you want to go in the training department or maybe you want to, to go to a chief pilot's office or, you know, do something, it's competitive, right?

You have to compete against your other pilots at that point, and most of them are going to have college degrees.

And so that'll be another thing that could, in theory, limit.

And the other thing I would add, too, is getting a college degree today.

I would argue there's a lot more access to it because of all the online capabilities.

This is going to sound really easy for me to say coming from a college.

I'm not saying you have to go to an Ohio State or a und, or Emory riddle or anything like that, but I am saying that you better have.

It's not going to make a lot of sense to somebody if you're like my age.

If you're 52 and you've had all this opportunity to go to college and now you're applying for director of training and you're up against three other people that all have degrees, what are you going to say?

Oh, I haven't had time.

I mean, you have, you can get it online now.

So, yeah, I think that it'll keep doors open for you all throughout your career as well.

And one benefit of going to a bigger school is you more than likely know the people that are hiring you or, you know, people that know the people that are hiring you.

Like, hey, I'm trying to do this, like, oh, my buddy does that.

Let me see what you should do.

It goes to networking again, and college can be a big networking event, and the friends you make, especially in such a small industry like we have, it's just second to none.

You need to widen that network however you can.

And if a four year degree can do that for you, then go do it.

Yeah, well, I'm not going to say his name because I don't have his permission, but I guarantee you you know who he is.

But there's a famous alum from Ohio state who's one of my all time favorite aviators.

That's like this incredible czech airman at Southwest.

You probably know who I'm talking about.

Yeah, I do.

And I love the guy.

I mean, to know him, he's literally one of those people you just want to fly with.

But he's very high up at southwest in terms of having influence.

But what I love is on his facebook page, he's constantly posting, oh, here's someone from Ohio State that I trained with, or here's somebody, and now they're flying together, or he's checking them out to go to Hawaii on the etahegheende.

I mean, it's just really, it's so that's.

You're absolutely right.

That's the kind of stuff that you can't really put a.

But there's a lot of value to that.

Just going to getting a college degree for that reason.

Those networks alone.

Yep.

And it's hard to say because not everyone can afford going to college.

Maybe it's not the best decision for you to go to a big four year degree or big four year school.

It's going to put you in the negative when you got to pay for flying on top of that.

So that's right.

It doesn't have to be Ohio State.

There's other smaller schools or even 61 schools.

And you get, like you said, get online where you can still create a great network.

You just might have to be more crafty in how you build your network.

It's just not all going to be right there for you.

You're going to have to look for it and you're going to have to find it more on your own.

That's right.

Well, listen, when I was in high school, that's what I did.

I would work all week.

I didn't come.

You know, my dad wasn't paying for any of my flight training, and so I ended up picking golf balls at a local golf course.

I'd work all week on the range, picking up golf balls.

And I take my lesson on the weekend, and that's how I got my private pilot.

That's what sounds funny now, that you'd work all week for an hour or two on the weekends.

But that's what I did.

And so I get it.

I get it.

It's not fair.

But like you said, there's always a way.

Whether it's a local community college that's really dirt cheap, there's some states, if you're residents in some states, you can almost get that for nothing.

You can at least get two years of it done before you go on to a bachelor's.

There's lots of opportunities out there.

And I get it.

And again, like you said, it is expensive.

And some people might be listening to this saying, well, I can't afford it.

What do these guys talking about?

I get that.

But I will say that if there's any way you can make some progress toward it, I think that will go a ways for you that'll help.

It'll be beneficial.

Yeah, 100% agree.

Well, Jim, thanks for coming on.

I appreciate it.

It's always good to talk to you.

And, and hopefully in the next time we talk, we'll be like, hey, look, Boeing got it together.

Airbus is delivering airplanes.

We are hiring like crazy, and everyone's getting hired again.

So I hope for those conversations to come.

But until then, we're going to, we're going to keep digging in and talking about everything.

So I appreciate your time and I hope you have a great day.

Sounds good.

Thanks, Justin.

Always nice to talk with you.

Always, always.

All right, man.

Have a good one.

Thanks, Justin.

Yeah.

Good luck on reserve, man.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

All right, see ya.

That's a wrap on today's episode.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

If you enjoyed it, make sure you leave a, like, subscribe.

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Can't hurt you.

Just go do it.

Seriously, do it.

No, I'm just kidding.

I hope you guys are having a great day.

And as always, happy flying pilot.

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