Good riddance. By your logic, that means I've missed the boat too, being 18 mos in at envoy and being 29 years old. Personally, I think you're an idiot. It sounds like you watched "Catch me if you can" on the big screens and thought that's what being a pilot (even in the 21st century) must be like, and started taking flying lessons. Once reality set in and your complete and utter lack of research into the career showed it's face you realized you have no passion for aviation and now want to whine about how you made a bad choice for yourself online whilst trying to diminish the (realistic, I'll get to that momentarily) hopes of others. You, sir, need to find a new career, because you clearly can't handle this one. Please, leave this industry and save us all the hassle of your nonsense.

Now on to why having a positive outlook on my career is a reasonable position to take. First off I must qualify this by saying that I don't expect that I will necessarily retire in the too 100 seniority at a major (with 10,000 pilots it really isn't that bad of a situation to be in). I do believe that I can have a fruitful career, make a good living, and have a good quality of life with the 36 years I have remaining to be a part of this industry. Let me reiterate that I am talking about the next 36 years, that is a long time, a lot of movement, and a lot of seniority over the course of a career. Now, instead of simply posting my opinion and stating my beliefs through conjecture, let's get some numbers involved.

These are numbers I gathered off of APC in January of this year, so some may have changed slightly, but the main conclusion is the same. So, as of January, the total number of pilots employed by the 21 regional airlines listed is 21,326. Considering we're talking about getting to a legacy airline, let's add the 5,351 pilots from JetBlue, spirit, sun country, allegiant, frontier, and virgin to arrive at a non-major airline work force (for the most part) of 26,667.

The airlines that I consider "career destination" airlines (simply my opinion and that's not to say that some of the national airlines aren't great career locations), are: American, Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, UPS, and Fedex. Amongst those airlines there are 25,658 mandatory retirements over the next 12 years.

I couldn't find mandatory retirement numbers from regional or national carriers, but I would guess that at least 20% are either within 12 years of retirement, or will not go to a major (many will stay at B6 or NK, et al). That right there eliminates 5,333 pilots from the pool.

With 25,658 openings at majors (not taking into account any attrition other than retirements or any growth in the industry), and 21,334 regional pilots to fill those spots, that leaves 4,324 empty spots to be filled up by military pilots without causing a dent in the movement of pilots in the industry. Granted there are more than 4300 military pilots, but many of them are opting to stay in the military. Also, fewer pilots are being trained by the military leading to more opportunity in the future. Furthermore, the retirements don't just stop at 12 years, they continue at similar 1500-2500 pilot per year rates for the following years as well. The number of pilots required over the next 25 years is staggering. Also, any pilot that leaves a national for a legacy opens up a spot at a national/lcc type airline, which further boosts movement from the regionals.

As for what I think about the future of envoy (back to the actual thread topic), I think that our fleet will be updated at some point sooner or later and we will not see the complete demise of envoy. I have faith that our union members aren't going to try to sell us on a bad deal. I think that as our staffing worsens we will see a management team that discovers a decrease in revenue seat miles and thus dollars. Not just envoy dollars, but AA dollars as their feed crumbles and customers leave for better service. Something will be done to mitigate this problem and it will be two fold. Bigger planes (more asm/pilot) and career advancement/contract improvements (more pilots).

I think Mason has had some good intel, but recently some of that intel has been clouded due to the fact that management doesn't know how they want to approach this situation. What may be true one day might not be true the next. I take what he says with a grain of salt, just a smaller grain than everything else I read on these types of forums. I am prepared for the next 6-12 mos to remain a difficult time at envoy and we may remain uncertain about much of their plans, but the long term reality is that AAG need as many pilots as they can retain to fly their planes. It would be nice to get some news or a plan soon, but toiling around in a miserable angst isn't going to help anything. I'm as impatient as the next, but I am trying to focus on doing my job well, enjoying my job (I do quite enjoy the part in between dropping and setting the brake), and living my life. What will be will be, and the future, if you open your eyes, looks pretty good.

I apologize for this dissertation but it all kind of came out at once.

...and I voted no (we're worth more and the flow isn't).