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Old 7th Aug 2016, 18:30
  #72 (permalink)  
NuGuy
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
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The pinch the regionals find themselves in is due to the collapse of the general aviation segment of the industry. The majors will never be in a position of shortage, despite the hand wringing and teeth nashing of some.

For decades the regionals (and commuters before them) benefited from the large and diverse general aviation industry to supply both inexpensive (relatively) training and a steady supply of willing aviators.

While GA in the US has been in steady, but slow decline since the early 80's, it was after 9/11 that it took it's most precipitous decline. Business insurance went into orbit, and while personal insurance crept back down, business insurance for anything even remotely to do with aviation stayed high at every segment of the business chain. This has a compounding effect through to the end user.

Also in the mid 1990's, you had scads of people who were still in the aviation business "for the love of it". You might laugh, but these types of operators often had a personal, vested interest in the business, and as a result, their prices were often only marginally above the break even point. By the 2000's these folks started to retire en masse, and either they closed up shop, or sold to a corporate entity that was far more interested in profit (not necessarily a bad thing), that drove up costs beyond the historical norm.

Up until the mid-1990s, you could go zero-to-hero (Commerical SEL/MEL, Instrument, CFI/II/MEI) in the US for about $15k USD...including a few months room and board. Adjusted for inflation that's about 22k today. But the actual price today is 3-4 times that amount.

Sure people will talk about product liability, but that's been with us since the early 1970s. Fuel costs don't help, but in the big picture, and inflation adjusted, 100LL is around historical norms with only blips here and there.

But there have been a few ugly confluences to really drive the stake in...the Great Recession of the late 2000's and the nasty run-up in fuel costs at the same time was bad. Lots of folks getting old and timing out of flying on the GA side. The collapse in GA aircraft price bubble in 2007 frustrated a lot of people who had money in their airplanes, and they pushed their planes into the back of the hangar and padlocked the door. The high costs and low aircraft value now makes upgrading an older airplane a seriously cost-negative situation, only doable by those truly dedicated to the cause.

The regional airline segment built their entire business model around a supply chain that no longer exists. I seriously doubt that any government funded or supported model can replace what existed up until 10 years go. It just isn't going to happen.

Throw in a societal/generation shift away from aviation interest and/or the airline lifestyle (if you can call it that), and your going to come up empty. Any solution, whether it's raising pay to attract what's left, or shifting flying to the majors, is going to cost big bucks, and, as typical, the airlines will seek to shift that cost to anyone else.

Nu
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