Another problem is that the very people that the majors seem to favor in their hiring are the guys that do the training at the regionals. So the regionals took big hits in their own training departments at the very time they needed to train more people than ever before. Some of the regionals are catching up, but the current attrition to the majors is causing a relatively huge training load (by historical standards) of students who are on the whole less experienced (by historical standards) to be done by instructors who are less experienced (than by historical standards).

Some regionals just seem to be trapped in lag. Others, generally with their own ample sims, like Horizon, seem to be warehousing FOs against future need. That’s great for getting hired. Getting off reserve, not so much.