Originally Posted by
BobbyLeeSwagger
I totally agree with you. I find it so ironic that we get our "thousands of hours of experience" striving to differentiate ourself with training dept, flight ops dept, union work, volunteer.. Flying their pax so we can one day be good enough to.... Wait for it.... Fly their pax!
Case in point, I was at WAI last spring and said hi to American, the gal looked at my resume with 2 masters degrees and 3.5+ gpas during all college/grad coursework, training dept, union & community volunteer work, 1400 121 tpic (a good portion of which was gained flying AA ticketed pax) and told me to look around at everyone else at the table area and find a way to differentiate myself lol.. Handed me my resume back and that was that. Being the snowflake that I am, I was demoralized and mildly humiliated.
What you're saying makes total sense
To your point --
Everyone looks at the retirement numbers at the majors and says "Wow, there are over 30k retirements over the next decade with just over 20k regional pilots, everyone will have a job."
But.
How many U/LCCs pilots have their apps in? How many corporate or former airline pilots are joining the regionals now to prime their resumes with current 121 time for the legacies? How many Air Force, Navy, and Marine jet pilots are leaving each year to take those jobs?
There certainly is opportunity - it isn't stagnant by any means. However, it's just as competitive as ever.
I think most everyone with a clean record and well-rounded app will be able to move beyond a regional if that's their goal, but you may have to settle along the way.