I am hopeful that OTS civilian only trained hiring stats go up. We are projecting to hire 730 total pilots in 2018. As retirements continue to accelerate, the largest available sector of qualified applicants will come from the civilian only trained side of the fence. I don’t like that term anyhow. Most of the OTSCOT (new term I just made up) success stories I read about have a common theme. An individual who networked, constantly updated and kept improving their resume with different qualifications or education. Also, I think AA is facing a problem of training capacity, lack of new pilots/new Captains to fill in the gaps from the flows from the WO’s and we are changing some contractual items that have management trying to “right size” the pilot numbers. All of this doesn’t change the simple fact that we are beginning to see a retirement wave that is unprecedented....

CD9