Originally Posted by
Apokleros
Well, Delta likes to hire line check airmen and sim instructors, and those guys are unfortunately not in short supply right now. Why on earth should they hire a run-of-the-mill line pilot with the same conventional background as 2000 other FOs/CAs also vying for a single spot to work there? And moreover, they don't want to drain their regional feed as mentioned above.
And yet they do. All the time. Like, a lot. All. The. Time.
Mil hiring is around half and declining. The rest is civ, and with 1300+ a year (and all the other airlines doing the same) there is no way that current or future new hires will (or ever have been) mostly Chief Line Check Airmen Sim Instructor Door Gunners.
DL and all the others hire PLENTY of "run of the mill" line pilots. Like by the thousands.