The recent changes to allow logging SIC time in aircraft that frankly don’t need SICs will go a long ways toward negating the 1500 hour rule anyway. Exactly how well the major airlines hiring people will react to those changes remains to be seen.
From their perspective, it’s often still about the money. A retired O-6 who has been out of the cockpit for a decade plus and flew A-10s before that is likely every bit the training risk that an ERAU graduate with four years in the regionals is, notwithstanding the UPT the retiree went to when the ERAU guy was in kindergarten.
But the retiree is 46 and the ERAU guy is 26. The military guy would wind up topping out Captain pay the last seven years of his career while the ERAU guy would be at max pay for 27 years. Whose butt will be the cheapest to fill that seat for the next 19 years? Overwhelmingly the retired O-6.
The economics say to keep the younger guys in the lower paying jobs for as long as possible. Yes, every seat is going to have to be filled, but if you can keep the average SENIORITY down ten years, it’s a HUGE savings to payroll and a significant - if not the major - reason that the big airlines have pushed the regional concept.
What other industry allows the pay of their employees to be reset to the apprentice level once or twice in mid career? And it’s the price advantage the new ULCC typically has over its competition, everybody has fairly low seniority. Even if the pay scale looks the same, the company hasn’t been around long enough for anybody to get to the highest levels.
So yeah, Delta would love to hire that 26 year old ERAU graduate with 3200 hours of RJ time, but they’d love it even better to hire him when he’s 45.