Two American Airlines-owned regional carriers will hike pilot pay by 50% through the end of August 2024, the latest sign airlines are willing to pay up in hopes of ending a pilot shortage that has left some travelers with fewer flight options. The increases would make the pilots the highest paid of the US regional airlines, ramping up pressure on other carriers to follow suit. Including separate, permanent pay hikes, the temporary raises will bring hourly wages for first officers in their first year of flying at Piedmont Airlines to $90 an hour, up from $51 an hour, the company said. For first-year captains, pay will be $146 an hour, up from $78 an hour. The airline could extend the temporary hikes if needed, Piedmont’s CEO said Monday. Airlines have been on pilot hiring sprees since last year when travel demand began to bounce back from Covid pandemic lows. But a persistent shortage of pilots is still hindering growth at a time of strong demand, prompting airlines to park jets that serve smaller cities. Part of the problem is that airlines encouraged pilots to take early retirement after demand cratered in 2020 and were left with too few when travel rebounded. “Attrition of the regional pilots, particularly the captains, has really spiked to the point where we’re not able to put our fleet in the air,” Piedmont CEO Eric Morgan said. The airline, based in Salisbury, Maryland, has been losing about 25 pilots a month to American’s mainline operation and has fallen short of its goal to hire around 40 pilots each month. It flies 50-seat Embraer ERJ-145s for American, usually between smaller cities, but hasn’t been able to operate 10 of its roughly 60 planes, Morgan said. Piedmont approached the union with the pay increases that were outside of normal contract negotiations, said Morgan and Capt. Ryan Miller, chairman of the Piedmont chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. Envoy Air, based in Irving, Texas, said Saturday it reached a similar agreement with its pilots’ union to shell out a 50% premium to pilots’ hourly rates through the end of August 2024.<br/>
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Finland’s climate may be cold but the country’s national carrier wanted to inject a feeling of warmth into its widebody cabins through the recent revamp of its Airbus A330 and A350 interiors, says Finnair head of customer experience and product design David Kondo. Detailing the thinking behind the revamp during the Passenger Experience Conference on 13 June, Kondo described the A330s’ previous cabins as “cold, clinical and sterile”, which, he says, “contrasts with my experience of Finland”. A view of the setting sun during a flight into Helsinki inspired the changes made to the carrier’s cabin lighting, which is designed to show “warmth, texture and personality”, adds Kondo. While previously there were “lots of cold, harsh surfaces”, inside the new cabins “almost every surface has texture or colour on it”. Finnair’s appointed design partner, Tangerine, received a “very specific” brief from the airline about what it wanted from its new cabins, recalls the design agency’s chief creative officer Matt Round. It wanted the interior of the aircraft to “feel like home” but to also feature a “clear brand identity at every touchpoint”.<br/>