Originally Posted by AnotherWriter

We lose about 20 a month to DL, plus 10 to others/retirement (that seems to be the trend, for every two we send to the mothership we lose one to something else).

We are probably averaging about 50 new hires a month, with a 15% washout is ~43 new pilots on line per month. So that's a net of about 13 new pilots a month. Which makes sense if you look at ISL 16-01 and 17-01, we are about 150 pilots larger.

We seem to like about 12 pilots per aircraft, but let's just assume 10 to make the math easier and be optimistic. We can take 1.3 airplanes per month, or about 15 per year. We have already made that commitment on the 200, so unless we start swapping out old 200s for 700s/E175s, I don't see how we take a lot of new jets this year beyond what is already planned. You could also make the argument that if we announced 175s with a west coast presence then our recruiting would increase dramatically.