American Airlines to Ithaca NY, Dubuque IOWA, and Toledo Ohio: GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

I don't know her.

Great headline, OP!!

Ugh.

Dubuque and Toledo appear to have no other service besides American. Driving 100 miles in the winter for those people is going to be rough.

Strange that they would cut off Ithaca, NY.

It's the home of Cornell University. There are tons of students who would be going to that destination.

If AA is the only airline going there, then what the fuck with the faculty and students do?

Is there a nearby airport?

R4, why would students be flying there? They live there. If you’re a new student from bumbfuck, you travel by train.

Were you born in 1900, R5?

People attend universities from all over the world.

It's no longer just a drive or a "train ride," grandma.

They should probably pay more and not have ended mask mandates if they would like airline workers of any level.

United serves Ithaca as well R4. They will be fine.

Faculty fly, as do the local middle class.

Toledo's air service comes and goes--I flew United there once. Detroit (hub for Delta) is an hour away from most of Toledo.

Smart pilots. Who wants to fly to these shit holes

I guess there aren't enough pilots tall enough to see over the dashboard.

Pete will handle it.

The only thing Pete could do (if he has authority over the FAA - I have no idea), is to allow larger planes be flown with a single pilot. Right now, the limit is 19 passengers I believe. If they allowed 50 and lower (CRJs) then it would significantly help the shortage.

I do not know how the every day pilot feels about that. CRJs frequently fly “long” flights (1-2 hours), so if a pilot became incapacitated it would be bad. I don’t know how often that happens (probably very infrequently) but still.

The other option is to lower the flight hours for a pilot to qualify for a commercial license. I know pilots who always point to this (as their would be an experienced pilot in the captain’s chair), but I’m not thrilled with this option really.

Being a pilot is expensive and time consuming, even for a recreational license. Lowering the hours is not going to cause a flood of people to take up the profession.

Aside from Ithaca, these places are flyover anyway.

[quote] Pete will handle it.

Pete's a fucking failure.

He has fucked up everything in transportation.

He's the reason everything is messed up right now.

Talk about not being ready for Prime Time.

[quote] Aside from Ithaca, these places are flyover anyway.

This is why they hate us.

How much do pilots get paid? It seems like even a decade ago and definitely 20 years ago it was considered a glamorous job.

But around 8 years ago I was at the Westchester airport and overheard two pilots taking about which shitty hotel they were going to stay in and how they had to call for availability and were trying to use points, etc. I had assumed someone handled that for them and they got to stay somewhere nice when they were away from home base overnight. It totally changed my perception.

I don’t want them to lower the standards. I want them to pay pilots more. I was in the world financial center on 9/11 and I remember someone asking (in between the first and second plane), “Why would the pilot do that?” And I was 100% confident the pilot was already dead. I even said, “He wouldn’t,” (yes, that was sexist). These days, you have pilots committing suicide and taking a whole plane load of people with them. It used to be largely ex military people. It’s the same with nuclear reactors - a lot of the operators are ex-navy. They were in the service and observable for years and had to get security clearances. A plane, like a nuclear reactor, can do a lot of damage.

[quote]as their would be an experienced pilot in the captain’s chair

Oh, dear!

Part of the problem is the mandatory retirement age for pilots. They have to retire at age 65, which forces pilots out of the system faster than new pilots can come in to replace them.

Yes, pilots need to be paid more and put up at decent hotels.

Rochester is not that far from Ithaca. Someone could probably make bank w a 4WD taxi between Rochester and Ithaca.

People who work for regional carriers, including pilots, make a whole lot less than those who work for major carriers.

R13 You were all over the place with that pointless ramble, dear.

Not a good thing for Dubuque; it's the only airline serving them, and they opened a brand new 23 million dollar terminal building six years ago.

Pilots are just bus drivers in the air.

They get paid well enough.

I brive a dus.

How do assholes like R15 make their way in the world?

Do they take any responsibility for anything, or is everything in the world the fault of Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg?

The pilots who fly commuter planes earn a shockingly low salary, like less than 40k. The FO in the accident linked below had to work as a barista to supplement her paycheck. This is the chickens coming home to roost. It's like when a restaurant owner wants to pay its staff $12 an hour and then cries when they don't have warm bodies to run the business.

In what kind of a sick society does someone who pilots a $20 million piece of equipment at speeds of 600MPH at 30,000 feet altitude, responsible for the lives of 50+ people (the capacity of the smallest regional jets) earn far less than some jerked off MBA who just happens to know who to make a pretty Excel spread sheet? Why?

"The only thing Pete could do (if he has authority over the FAA - I have no idea), is to allow larger planes be flown with a single pilot. "

It's funny because it's never going to happen.

R28

Compensation for commuter pilots varies by airline, and not all are so badly off.

First of all there is base pay, then extras piled on that could raise annual total compensation by double or more.

Everyone has to start somewhere... Piloting regional/commuter planes is where most pilots start out to rack up necessary hours that qualify them for larger jets. Only way around this is for those coming out of the military already with necessary hours or pretty much near under their belt.

Problem is air travel has grown so quickly not just in USA but other parts of world with airlines adding more and more fights. This demand has far outstripped available supply and pipeline cannot produce more bodies quickly enough.

What the airlines should do is allow check in and security at these airports then bus the passengers directly to the plane at the nearby airport. I would be happy to clear TSA in Toledo and not have to do it in Detroit.

R5, Cornell has students from all over the country and the world. You think if they're not local, they take the train? The dorms are closed for winter and summer break, so there's no option to stay there all year unless you live in off campus housing. More students use the Syracuse airport than Ithaca, though, because it's much cheaper, or at least it was when I went there. There's also a shuttle service that runs between Cornell and Syracuse.

In my later years, I moved off campus and drove back and forth from Wisconsin between semesters, but my first two years I had to fly for the major breaks, as did many who lived in the dorms.

They'll fly United instead and they won't have to change in Atlanta as Delta flyers often have to do.