The only good to come of this terrible accident may be the public scrutiny into the issues of pilot fatigue and the appalling wages and conditions of regional airline pilots. Nothing will probably change at any rate, it never has and due to the economics of ticket prices in the US and how they are determined it never will.
(There are a few threads on this topic from 1-2yrs ago)
These are basically internships NOT jobs.
but have all the responsibilities of a job. You are basically working for free.
I refused to apply as I refused to accept having to do all the intense study and training and then work very long hours with all that responsibility for a job that paid basically slightly more than the min wage, approx $10-15per "actual' duty hour for the first 1-5yrs til you made Capt and even then it was not much better until you were very senior and had many yrs with the company.
Under FAR 121 pilots can work and usually do, up to a
16hr duty period, which is criminal in itself.
Actual sleep time after getting to/from airport to hotel/home, eating, showering etc is
usually less than 4-6hr. So there is a big part of the fatigue issue and what causes it. It is all
legal though, bloody fantastic eh???
Pay scales topping at approx 80K per yr after 12-15yrs with the company.
Sub 20K USD per annum was /is common for most junior FO.
So for all of that you basically are financially losing money every yr.
At least it is possible to get some decent to excellent jobs in charter/corporate IF you are pre qualified/rated and experienced on the specific aircraft type the position is for.
Those jobs often paid better than the regionals , IF you could get the work.
Regionals flying anything from B1900's to 90 seat RJs are all to FAR121 standards same as larger carriers..
Most pilots are there to get experience and then move onto larger mainline carriers. Doing so if you did not have regional part 121 experience was rare unless you had good military or charter/corporate turbine time and preferably jet time.