Happy New Year, everyone. As we move into 2023, it’s worthwhile to look back on 2022 as the year that shook the aviation industry, the piloting profession, and particularly the airline sector to its core. From record-shattering hiring at the major airlines to previously unthinkably lucrative contracts at the regionals, nearly every month of 2022 brought a new development that left those of us who’ve been in the business a while agape with amazement.
There have been some smaller interesting industry developments as well, mostly unintended consequences of the larger pilot shortage and not all of them necessarily positive for the new or aspiring professional pilot. One of these is that major airlines have revived the practice of “metering,” limiting or slowing the non-flow hiring of pilots who work for their affiliated regional airlines and instead preferring to poach pilots from rival carriers’ affiliated airlines. So, for example, it has become easier to get hired at Delta as an Envoy pilot than as a non-flow Endeavor pilot—and meanwhile, the Endeavor pilot may have a quicker time getting on at United than at Delta. This has reduced the career value of working for a regional airline even as the monetary value has increased considerably.
