This is why when opinions on a subject vary we must select our sources very carefully. A guy with a web page on the internet? Almost never a reliable source for anything but personal opinion. A spokesperson for a company? Usually motivated to a particular conclusion. A third party analyst such as FAA or GAO? Much better -the bias is usually removed and the clarity is better. A peer-reviewed scholarly journal? Almost completely out of controversial waters by design, but still not 100% free from controversy. A university textbook? Pretty much the gold standard for most kinds of knowledge and completely trustworthy in most cases. Unfortunately they tend to lag behind current events a lot of the time.

Agree.

I think you're wrong here based on what I have seen. There are a variety of of sources telling us there is no present shortage at the regional level. There may be a bt of a shortage of people willing to work for typical low wages, but that's not really a shortage that's just low wages. You make a good point that defining the term shortage begs the question of, what conditions justify the use of the term.

Common dictionary definition. ": a state in which there is not enough of something that is needed."

But what if you did not try very hard to find the thing you need? Obviously if no serious attempt to gather what you need was made, it's a funny thing to say there was a shortage. And that's my next point- no serious attempt has been made by the regional airline industry to solve its staffing problems. I would argue that serious in this usage means willing to offer competitive market rates of pay in comparison to similar jobs to be had in other fields. That's a pretty simple definition of "serious" in this context. And when they do that, if they do that, the pilots are there for the getting, a fact which is easily substantiated by hard data.