Originally Posted by
FlynChick
I would think less than half. You would assume most PICs at the regional level have their application in, then add to that the number of people who transitioned to a national airline to get to the majors both left and right seat, then add the corporate and fractional pilot group. Those numbers by themselves should be well over 5000 and that's not including hopefuls just putting in their application for luck's sake (many of my FOs have them in at my regional) . So if Delta truly has only 8000 applications I would say the good majority is not military, they just have a preference for that in their pilot group.
Maybe it's changed since I was a regional FO about 3 years ago but at the time 9 out of 10 PICs I flew with did not have apps out. I was constantly disappointed in people because they didn't have their logbook up to date and weren't sure where they wanted to go and "oh... I'll apply in a year things are good here right now." Then I realized every one of these guys was one more less person competing for the job!