So some pilots were sitting around drinking beers last night. What else are we going to do on Furlough Fridays?

We were discussing pilot numbers. And some idiot (that would be me) suggested that far less than the total number of pilots holding ATPs "make it". "Make it" was defined, amongst our little drunken motley crew, as legacy and FedEx and UPS pilots. Most of us were still regional pilots and hoped to not spend our careers in a CRJ or the like. So we hadn't considered a regional captain having "Made it".

So pilots being pilots we all dug in on our phones like college kids on Tinder.

Here's what we came up with. 165K total ATPs 2019 according to the FAA data statistics.

According to APC's airline profiles.

Delta 14600 pilots

United 13300 pilots

American 15176 pilots

Alaska 2888 pilots

Hawaiian 868 pilots

For a Legacy pilot (according to APC) total = 46832



Regional pilots

Endeavor 1905
Horizon 850
Mesa 1400
PSA 2041
Skywest 5333
Air Wis 547
Envoy 2500
Republic 2461
Total regional pilots = 17037



Cargo

FedEx 5037
UPS 2927
Total Cargo (big time) = 7964

Total = 42%
No regional = 33%
So depending on how you look at this either half or a third of pilots holding an ATP have "Made It"? What in our drunken attempt at math did we miss here? Because those numbers look pretty bleak for someone starting out in this industry.