Originally Posted by
saab2000
The majors will start to care when half their flights (which are 'regional' flights) can't operate anymore at the current pace because the regionals can't staff their airlines.
I'm not against the ATP thing but this could have some unintended consequences. It's not like people are just going to go out and buy 1500 hours of time and the appropriate amount of M/E time to get an ATP and there aren't really enough of the right kind of jobs to build that time with either. There may be enough folks out there floating around right now but in a couple years it could be very, very difficult to find adequate numbers of pilots. That's when the majors will start to care.
I only read the first page of this thread, so sorry if this is a repeat response. My question to you is this, how did people do it before? Several years back, regionals wouldn't even look at you if you didn't have a significant amount of time. ATP mins would have been considered low time. There was no pilot shortage then. People had to instruct and do whatever they could to build time for a few years before they were competitive enough. What is different now?
IMO, this lack of new pilots is more of a money issue, not a time building thing . Cost of training skyrocketing, pay and QOL at the regionals suck, and lack of career progression. Some would call this low return on investment. I think the airlines are going to have to sweeten the pot a little if they don't want to run out of pilots.