Having been in a regional uniform not that long ago, and confident that there are many very well qualified candidates in the regional ranks, I couldn't disagree more with your "this doesn't seem close to necessary yet" thought.

Put yourself in the airline's position - first, of the 15,000 regional pilots you mention and considering, let's say, a 10 year window, some pilots from that group are going to be hired elsewhere, some will be too near retirement, others won't want to make the transition and still others will be not particularly hirable for various reasons. Either way, any graph of required vs available pilots (worldwide) starts to look pretty alarming in the not too distant future. There are a lot of companies (and militaries) looking for pilots and they're all in competition to varying degrees.

As the airline, is it worth ramping up several potential sources of future pilots to continue to exact some control over quality and quantity needed, or is it better to just wing it and worry about it later, or take what's left of the remaining pilots applying? If I were making those decisions (and thank goodness I'm not lol) I'd want to start at least the framework for a few different means of obtaining pilots of the desired quality, and if more or fewer are needed over the long run, well, the rate can be adjusted through the size of the program.

From a line pilot perspective, my big hope and expectation is whatever the source, which will surely continue to include plenty of regional pilots, I just want quality pilots and quality people.