Originally Posted by
flyguy81
By 2023 (I think) the big 3 are booting something like 700+ a year. Regionals are already hurting. It’s only going to get worse. Once LAX opens and HI starts we’ll normalize a bit I think. Is that enough to cover the next 3-5 years? Who knows.
They're talking growth less than 5% and HI is 2.5-3%. With current retirement rates, you don't need 600-800 pilots per year to cover the "real" 2%ish growth rate over the next couple years. MAX may open up more international destinations to the South but then we'd be head to head with Spirit and others already doing that. I just don't see big growth ahead that matches our hiring rate. That's why I'm calling it a hedge or pilot bank. The hiring ahead of growth rates just gives the company a year or two buffer to drag out the contract while they try to break the union (like spirit and frontier), maybe even force it to arbitration. If F9 can't strike after the abuse they've suffered, we will never be released to strike no matter how good/bad things get. The pilot hedge just gives the company a few years to beat on us.