Podcast: A Discussion With The President And CEO Of Republic Airways

Tune is as Aviation Week Network's Karen Walker speaks with Bryan Bedford, president and CEO of Republic Airways, about the pilot shortage and other challenges affecting the U.S. regional airline industry.

Don't miss a single episode. Subscribe to Aviation Week's Window Seat Podcast in Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Rush Transcript

Karen Walker:

Hello everyone, and welcome to Window Seat, the Aviation Week Network Air Transport podcast. I'm ATW and Group Editor-in-Chief Karen Walker, and it's great to have you on board. Now, this week I'm at the U.S. Regional Airline Association's Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. And I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by one of the speakers and a leader in U.S. regional airline service, Bryan Bedford, who is president and CEO at Republic Airways. Bryan's been with the industry, what, some 30 years I think, Bryan, yes?

Bryan Bedford:

For 35 years, yes.

Karen Walker:

That's right. An incredibly successful story at Republic where you have some 200 Embraer E-Jet operating to, I think it's 80 cities now, is that right, around the states?

Bryan Bedford:

Yeah, so we have over 220 Embraer 170, 175 aircraft. They operate for United, American, and Delta, and we fly almost a hundred cities in North America, so Canada, Caribbean, that sort of thing.

Karen Walker:

So, this conference here, there's a lot of discussion on some very important topics affecting the regional industry here in the United States, which I think is fair to say is having a challenging time, certainly in the past couple of years. One of the big challenges that everybody's talking about, of course, is a pilot shortage that's particularly acute at the regionals and particularly acute with the captains of those regionals. Can you talk a little bit, both generally about what's happening in the industry and specifically at Republic?

Bryan Bedford:

Of course, Karen, thank you. Well, first of all the shortage is really nothing new. We've been grappling with this since the United States back in 2013, implemented a new law that required first officers to have the same flight hour experience as is required by captain, so 1500 hours. That's of course a rule that's very unique to the United States. We haven't seen any other countries adopt the 1500-hour rule, but it is the law of the land, and it has been a challenge for young people to endure the time and expense to accumulate 1500 hours of flying single engine planes around in VFR weather. But having said that, over the years, over the past decade, the system is now producing north of 10,000 new entry pilots annually. The bad news is the demand is somewhere between 12 and 14,000 new pilots annually. So every year we're still falling a little bit further behind.

Karen Walker:

And what we're seeing here, of course, in the United States is that supply and demand issue is of course creating that competition for that same pool of pilots, and the major carriers in the U.S. are often winning that game against the regional carriers. Is that true?

Bryan Bedford:

So in the United States, and I think this is true globally, it has always been a developmental pathway for young people to become aviators. Even before the 1500-hour rule, most aviators wouldn't get hired until they had 3, 4, 500 hours of experience. So they would do things like tow banners, or parachute jumping, skydiving services and crop dusting and things like that to build experience. Of course, now a lot of them are doing flight instructing and just buying time using mom and dad resources. So that competition for new pilots, while it's acute, we compete very well with that. The biggest change that we've seen in the last 18 months as we've been recovering from COVID is that the major airlines are hiring at unprecedented levels. I mean levels we just haven't ever seen in my 35-year history in the industry. And of course, that is driving turnover at the lower end of the spectrum, which is where the regionals operate.

So historically, our job has been to bring young people into the industry, train them how to fly commercially, upgrade them to the right seat, and after about two years of pilot and command experience, they would be ready to matriculate to the mainline carriers. Well, today, Karen, the mainline carriers can't wait. And when I say mainline aisles include the low cost carriers and even the larger cargo operators in the mix, they simply have demands. And so they've been reducing their hiring standards. Five years ago, you had to have a bachelor's degree and at least 2000 hours of pilot and command experience to migrate to the larger carriers. And today those standards just don't exist anymore.

Karen Walker:

I'm going to be frank here, and you may not be comfortable answering, but I'd still like to ask, does this also cause a safety issue when there's just such a fast throughput of not just hiring new pilots but getting them up that ladder more quickly?

Bryan Bedford:

So Karen, let me answer it this way. The U.S. carriers have tremendous safety protocols in place between safety management systems, flight operations, quality assurance, voluntary safety disclosures, which frankly allow pilots or other crew members to disclose safety concerns without any worry of repercussion. So I trust in those systems. I trust in those systems to do exactly what they're designed to do, which is, and they have delivered an unprecedented level of safety in the U.S.

But I do think we have to ask ourself, are there concerns we should have, we have so many young people that are moving so rapidly through the system. It's just, as I said before, it's unprecedented, we've never experienced this kind of migration from regionals to network airlines in history. So I think it's fair to at least ask the question that you're asking, could this be part of the reason we've seen some of the near misses and the communication errors, because it's not just in our cockpits, it's also in our air traffic control system. So there is just a lot of inexperience, I'll say, versus what we've had in the past. But I trust in the systems that we have in place to identify it, and I trust in the system to want to mitigate it. Again, a fair question to ask.

Karen Walker:

Absolutely. And everybody in this industry on all side has agreed that safety is the number one priority and of course remains. So you touched on the ATC issue as well. FAA has a chronic shortage of controllers. They're looking to address that that will take time. Particularly in that northeast corridor of the U.S., they've been asking airlines to cap their schedules just as they're trying to really get their schedules back up post-pandemic to help them transition through that. Your headquarters is in Indiana, that's a big area for you guys. Has that impacted you in terms of the adjustments that have had to be made?

Bryan Bedford:

Well, while we're headquartered in Indiana, Karen, we actually do most of our business up and down the Eastern Seaboard. So hubs in New York and JFK and LaGuardia, Boston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia. So I mean that is our bread and butter, north and south. So we're sort of right in the middle of these ATC concerns. You may recall that the airlines had some challenges over the holidays last year going through Christmas and the new year. And we sat down with our partners and government and we said, "How can we build schedules that fit within the resources that both the carriers have and air traffic control has?" And we purposely as an industry dramatically reduced what we would've preferred to fly in order to fit within what could be competently flown. And again, not a safety issue, it's a reliability issue. And so we thought we had a great plan going into this summer with our partners in government, and it just hasn't worked.

So we certainly were staffed to be able to fly more than the industry is flying, but we conscientiously reduced that schedule in order to fit with and what we thought were the constraints of air traffic control. And it didn't work. I mean, July was a disaster, August was better. September, we're back into kind of the red zone in terms of reliability challenges. And so I just don't know what it's going to take for our partners at the FAA and air traffic control in order to understand what their staffing constraints really are and to share those with us. I will say I'm pleased that the government recognized it made sense to continue to extend the slot waivers. And I hope they continue to do that until air traffic control actually can handle the volumes, because certainly we'd prefer to fly these missions. We believe there's customer demand, customers want the service. As soon as our friends at ATC can deliver a reliable product, we'll put that service back into place.

Karen Walker:

Always hard to forecast anything in this industry, of course, but are you hopeful that maybe 24 could be better?

Bryan Bedford:

Well, I'm always hopeful, but I think I'm also pragmatic. I don't think the pilot shortage issues are going to abate in 2024. I don't think the captain shortage issues for the regionals are going to abate in 2024. I think the linchpin of all of our staffing concerns really resides with the network airlines when they finally are satiated, or caught up for their pilot demands, that'll take pressure off the entire system. Will that happen in 2024? I hope, but again, show me when it happens.

Karen Walker:

Very interesting, yes. Sort of almost contradiction to this sort of an irony maybe, is that just as you are having these constraints and struggles, one of the big post-pandemic trends certainly here in the U.S. is that a lot of people moved out of the big cities to smaller cities, and a lot of them are now commuting, sometimes back to those bigger cities. And at a very time when the community air connectivity service is disappearing in some of those towns and cities. Do you think ultimately that's good news for the industry in that there's going to be more and more demand from those people for that connectivity?

Bryan Bedford:

So this is probably the most heartbreaking situation that we face in the industry is, we want as an industry to connect every city to the transportation network in North America. We would prefer people to get on planes, it's the safest way to travel. We've seen a precipitous increase in highway fatalities as people have been forced to get on highways because air service no longer exists in their community. We know that air service in small-town America is not just vital in terms of the quality of life for those communities, but it's vital for their economic livelihoods. So we know what we do is essential, and we actually have a government program called Essential Air Service that is designed to partner with communities to help them recover air service that has been lost. But the reality is, if there aren't pilots to fly these planes, there's no way to bring this service back.

So again, a lot of the roots of these problems are unearthed in the pilot shortage and unfortunately in the very unhelpful legislative environment that we have right now. So could it be solved? Absolutely, it could be solved with competent leadership in Congress. It could be solved through using data and science on how we should train pilots using the latest technology for flight simulations versus asking young people to go build up time flying around an airport pattern in a single engine non-complex plane to build flight time. It's just not helpful for their training and it's not helpful for the industry.

Karen Walker:

Yeah, you made a good point there. It's the quality of training, isn't it, rather than just flying and simulators are high quality training, yes?

Bryan Bedford:

That's correct. And we've seen a letter recently signed, I think by seven former FAA administrators attesting to that fact and trying to encourage Congress to put the politics aside and focus on creating the safest aviation system in America, but also doing it in a way that allows us to reconnect service to small town America. Hopefully small-town America is listening to your podcast today, Karen, and they will write their legislators and ask them to do the right thing and get engaged and solve this problem because it's very solvable.

Karen Walker:

And I think you raise a very good point there. That's the voice, isn't it? That's the getting that message out. And obviously, the airlines are doing this. RAA that represents the commuter airlines is very active in this, but it's also got to be the communities themselves that've got to speak up.

Bryan Bedford:

Ultimately, all the power is in the community because they're the voter. And when the voter speaks, politicians will listen. Right now the voters have to find their voice and hopefully they will. And when they do and enough of them speak up, that will conventional legislators, it's time to allow actual data, actual science, let the experts actually in the room to talk about how we can create a much safer pilot training process than what we have today.

Karen Walker:

I just have to ask you, because you have been doing this for a long while, you are, like I say, running a very successful airline despite all these challenges, do you still enjoy it? Do you still have optimism overall?

Bryan Bedford:

Karen, I absolutely love it because one of the solutions that we started implementing at Republic about six years ago is opening our own flight academy, Leadership in Flight Training, LIFT. And the LIFT Academy now has nearly 400 students in it, and we're seeing about 70 of those students a year are matriculating through our structured training programs and coming to Republic, and they're just fantastic aviators. So the ability to get into high schools and to get into our communities and advocate for this career opportunity, being an aviator is a transformational career and it's an amazing opportunity for these young people. And so being able to unlock that sort of take some of the economic challenges away, give them a guaranteed career progression has been very satisfying for me personally. And I think very satisfying for our company.

Karen Walker:

Dream opportunity for those people that get onto those programs. And also then it's part of that solution going forward for the community as a whole, as you say, for cities as well. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. I know you are very busy, but it was great to be able to talk with you. So thank you for joining me, Bryan.

Bryan Bedford:

Thank you, Karen, it was wonderful to be with you today.

Karen Walker:

And thank you also to our producers, Cory Hitt and Guy Ferneyhough and of course to our listeners. Make sure you don't miss any of our weekly programs by signing on at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. This is Karen Walker, disembarking from Window Seat.