to mking, the reason the minimums are so low currently is because the company (in their infinite wisdom) had run out of qualified upgrade candidates ... aka, everyone before you already had been called. With the new requirements, that should make about 45 more people eligible for upgrade immediately, and the new hire class that was behind those 45 people will begin to be eligible within the next 3 months...hope all those guys are ready with only one year on the dang airplane.

as far as attracting more people...i dunno, but, this might be their ploy to retain some of the ones they have...at least from the FO ranks, where attrition is worse than on the captain side.