Just put two reasonably competent people in the cockpit at all times and stop trying to f**k an extra penny out of every dime, you cheap chiselling b*st*rds.
Right now many feeder airlines are barely paying a living wage for their junior cockpit staff, so stop pretending that the personnel costs are going to put you out of business. You're certainly not passing along the recent fuel cost savings to us sardines.
Pretty much any pilot working for a regional airline is a brand new pilot fresh out of flight school. That's with essentially no experience, just their ratings. A little Googling shows that after their first year, an FO at expressjet makes over 30k a year at almost $35 an hour at a 75 hour per month guarantee. To put that in perspective, the ground crew at my airline have to work for 4.5 years before they make that much. Many pilots live in crash pads that cost them $200-400 a month, utilities included. assuming they are a decent pilot, within 10 years they generally have enough hours and experience to apply for a major airline. Any pilot who come through the military has a pretty good shot at going straight to a major or cargo airline as opposed to a regional one. At the major airline I work for, currently the most junior FO on the lowest seniority A/C type makes $133 per hour, and are guaranteed at least 65 hours of pay per month. That is over $8600 a month. There are plenty of jobs that pay a lot less than what a brand new, zero experience pilot makes. Worst case, if they take 10 years to get to a major airline they are making over $60k at the regional then over $100k at the major. Until then, low-mid 30s and up (for only 2-3 years experience) is not exactly what many people would call a "barely living wage"(I was able to do just fine with much less than that), and it's certainly still better than the wage most of the people loading the planes, or even working security for the planes, are making.
