Conversation with top men is that February and March are both planned for 40 new hires, which puts the classes in the low teens when you have three in a month. The total for April hasn’t been decided yet.

Further rumor is that almost everyone below the CFO understands that carrying extra pilots by running onboarding and training at a reasonable level, and having them earn the inexpensive first year pay, is a cheap and easy way to avoid expensive pilot shortages later when retirements pick up and the training pipeline doesn’t accelerate like a Tesla in ludicrous mode and spit out ready pilots on demand. Lack of familiarity with how onboarding and training actually works makes this too much of an academic, far away problem for said senior leader. Pretty much need a penguin to fall off the iceberg before he’ll allow another to climb aboard.