Yup. Most of us have seen it twice already.

UCH is planning on growing overall capacity in very very low single digits over the next couple of years. Organically, that does not make us grow to 16,000 pilots.

Unless, we buy somebody. (Alaska?, Spirit?)

And/or, we insource the vast majority of UAX flying, and hire or merge the pilots. It might make more sense to hire them, as mergers suck. A little of this is planned. A "little" doesn't get us to 16k pilots. We would have to insource the majority of UAX. Who knows, it might happen. Or not. The motivation for this might be to make UAX jobs more attractive, so they could attract more/better applicants. Right now it is a food fight for pilots at the bottom.

The downside? We can nearly instantly park a bunch of old airframes, and we probably would if oil goes back up or the economy goes off a cliff. Right back to 10k pilots, or less.

What will happen? Who knows, and we are all just pawns along for the ride. Grab a 6 pack and hang on for the ride.

I only predict.....change.