Originally Posted by
KC135
I'm showing 11,054 retirements (AA, UA, DAL, UPS, FDX, ALK) for the next 6 years from today and 20,426 regional pilots as of today. Where are you getting your numbers? Don't forget military, corporate, cargo, charter, returning expat taking some legacy jobs. This will put pressure on the LCC's for sure but this isn't a leak a good contract won't seal in my opinion.
I don't believe your numbers are correct, also you don't have Southwest pilots in there. Further without any other data, I cannot tell whether your AA numbers include USAirways. Also, what the numbers do not take into account is the age of the regional pilots who will replace major airline pilots.
We could also include JetBlue, Frontier, and Spirit in that count.
My data is from an Alpa article, but here is another article showing 18,000.
Why the U.S. Airline Pilot Shortage Is So Hard to Solve -- The Motley Fool