What to do
I am new here on the website, and this may be the incorrect place to post this, but I have a few questions. It seemed that a few weeks ago it was the best time it has ever been to become a pilot and in the course of a few weeks it as become the worst time to become a pilot.
I am at the point where I have about two years left in my college program. I have my commercial license with my instrument rating and working on CFI to build hours. All was looking good until a few weeks ago. Now all of my progress has been put on pause and I quite literally can't even go to school.
My main questions have to do with the airlines and hopefully can be answered by some airline pilots, and here they are
1. When it comes to laying off pilots at the airlines due to the reduction in airline activity in response to COVID19, will those pilots have the opportunity to be hired back to the airline they worked for if things recover sooner than later with their seniority in tack?
2. In terms of moving in a flow at American or even United's AVIATE program, will that continue at the rate it was previously at once the Majors start hiring again?
3. In conjunction with my last question, my third and final question is one that possibly concerns me the most, is there still a pilot shortage? One of the reasons I became a pilot and spent all this time and money is because of the promise of becoming an airline pilot, and relatively quickly at that. Of course, I love flying for flying, but my dream was to become an airline pilot. If there is no hiring of any kind in the near future, where does that leave me? I don't want to come off as I don't care about everyone else careers and I only am looking out for myself because I do care very much about how this is effecting everyone in our community. But with that said, I am very concerned for my own future in this industry.
Thank you to anyone that replies, I value everyone's insight and opinions.