Higher quality candidates aren’t applying because of the horrendous pay, but also because the word has gotten out that mathematically, someone hired now won’t upgrade for more than 10 years and rising!

Once this aircraft order is complete in 2021, the most junior captain will be around #1600 seniority. According to the last vacancy bid, we have almost 1900 pilots.

Over the next 7 years, we have less than 100 retirements. lol

And don’t count on attrition because as you get closer to upgrading, more and more of that attrition is guys below you leaving, thus not getting you any closer to upgrading.