I have a hard time believing that. Just this March at WIA, BK at United said they have been hovering between 10k-11k apps on file. Delta said they had 10k. AA didn't have much of any presence there, which leads me to believe they have no issues filling classes atm. The general consensus is that the level of experience is going down some.. but we did have a decade of almost no hiring, so you have pilots who have been stuck in the system for 8-10 years building experience that are finally getting the chance to move up, so the stats of the pool are going to go down.

Also, 'qualified' what does that mean? The magic number of 'points' that makes you competitive to get into the interview pool? I'm betting the majority of applicants have well over the minimum of a degree, ATP and 1000 turbine.

ALPA has 14,000 fee for departure members. Plus another ~7500 non-alpa regional pilots. So 21,500 regional pilots, this isn't including cargo and LLCs. Half of those 21.5k are captains acting as PIC on a jet in 121 ops. Then there's long term FOs stuck with 4000+ TT and years of airline experience. Then the military is losing ~1500 pilots per year and the majority of them do not put an app in until they are less than a year from separating, and the vast majority go straight to a major airline. Bottom line, I have a very hard time believing there's only 3000 qualified apps at any major. There's at least 20,000 regional pilots with the minimum qualifications. Many of whom have well over minimum qualifications, and many have thier apps in at places.

Southwest is the oddity since about half of the regional pilot pool didn't have the requisite 1000 TPIC to even fill out an app, and some of those that did have the TPIC time do not want to spend the rest of their career on a 73 with a rumored 14-16 year upgrade and thus did not apply.