Why did AA go from having 13,000 qualified applicants on file 10 years ago, to only having 3,000 today?
UAL is planning to hire 1200 in 2018. Take away roughly those 1,000 off the AA list, subtract all those that AA hires, and add some that are new to the list. That puts the AA applicant list down to about 2,000 by the end of 2018. Then about 1,000 by 2019, then 0 by 2020.
Sounds like an HR hiring tsunami to me.
If the majors start hiring those with 0 pilot experience, like the military does, then they'll start to catch up to the shortage.