It will be a long term problem to find enough captains even if they get contractual relief to hire street captains. We have approximately 400 active captains now (prob not even that much but just to make it simple) and we will need about 850 active captains two years from now. Lets say attrition will be 200 captains over the next two years that means they need to add 650 captains in the next 24 months or 27 captains per month. The current captain upgrade pass rate has dropped lately so lets use 75% pass rate going forward and they would need to get 36 pilots a month in upgrade training in order to be properly staffed for 150 airplanes in two years. Add the need to continue to hire at least 50 FOs per month over that same time frame and it seems it will be quite the uphill battle for crew planning. If every eligble FO opts to take the upgrade they still will be short qualified pilots by the end of the year or so I have heard from friends in the training department.