Originally Posted by
hockeypilot44
Let's say 100 pilots are supposed to reach 65 each year for the next 5 years. All 500 of them retire tomorrow. The company doesn't replace any of them. That seems to be the case. We are shrinking. Now the remaining oldest pilot on the list isn't suppose to retire until 2017. Our steady flow of retirements just got further away. How many pilots behind you is more important than how many in front of you. I would like to see us hire before guys ahead of me retire.
And this is what the company wants, the steady flow of massive retirements to be as far away as possible. By offering early outs they pull some of the guys now rather than later when they won't have the capacity to replace them.
However, for this to be good for us the next three years or so, they need to hire also or we just see higher paying jobs disappear and not be backfilled like we've seen on the 777 and 747 the last couple of years. So it's good, but not good at the same time.