Originally Posted by
Mesabah
The issue will come three, four years from now, when the massive hiring begins. You need to take these pilots, and hire them at Delta right out of college, bypassing DCI completely. It will cause all kinds of issues sending them to DCI first. Simply put, we can't replace a Propel pilot when they leave, we need pilots with 1000hrs of 121 time. The experience they gain at DCI is so they can upgrade at DCI.
I don't know how much more "massive" the hiring is going to get. Delta has been hiring over a thousand a year the last few years but our mandatory retirements will never reach that number, even in the peak years in the middle of the next decade. I suppose some of the other majors (specifically UAL) haven't been at to their max hiring potential but they all have been steadily hiring.
I honestly don't know how much more significantly the hiring practices are going to change from where they are now. The most common background of Delta new hires seems to be 4-year aviation college, CFI or other time building, a few years at a regional, then hired relatively quickly after upgrading (or even prior to upgrading in some instances). With the increasing enrollment numbers at aviation colleges I don't see why this isn't sustainable. There are very few other careers where you can get a BS degree from a non-Ivy League college and have a very realistic chance of making six figures only three to four years out of college.