Originally Posted by Commuter56

I think this is why also, but disagree with the future results. Essentially the big 3 have removed the 40'ish civilians from their pipeline now. When hiring first started there were plenty of Regional/LCC lost decade pilots who put their apps in and were not called. Meanwhile plenty of 20/30 somethings were hired. Honestly the big 3 got all the 40 year old pilots they needed from military retirees leaving after putting in their 20. So they got a nice age mix with lots of younger less experienced pilots getting a huge break. Meanwhile the lost decade pilots got passed over.

When hiring picked up the big 3 could have pulled from the regional CA/LCC crowd and gotten those pilots onto the list to cover the growth. They probably could have strategically hired to weaken the LCC's if they had been smart about it. The younger crowd would have then had fast upgrades at the regionals and built experience over the last 5 years. There would then be future bubble from the lost decade crowd, but it could be easily covered by having a continuous flowing pipeline up through the regionals.

As it stands the LCC's have gotten decent contracts and I don't know of anyone who still updates their applications other than junior FO's. The over 40 regional Captains that I talk to have decided to make the best of their situation and probably aren't going to leave now. Everyone over 40 knows that we missed the initial hiring wave and although retirements are coming, we would have thousand of younger pilots on the list ahead of us. The hiring decisions of the Legacy airlines made the difference in retiring as a widebody Captain, or number 5000 on the list in a narrowbody.

All that said, with the biggest retirement wave coming, they can't get us anymore. Their decisions in 2015 have essentially locked away thousands of the most experienced pilots that they can no longer hire. I think this will in the long run be much more detrimental to their hiring needs than would have a secondary retirement bubble in 20 years. It would have been smaller and more manageable than the one coming.