Originally Posted by
tallpilot
It's a 12 month look back so next April is a likely UAX bloodbath unless of course Scooter pushes forward with the original plan to widdle down to 4 UAX carriers. Then it will be a rolling disaster like we've seen so far.
Duration of the slump matters. The highly experienced 121 pilots will start having difficulty getting hired if more than a year goes by. Almost all air carriers require currency for new hires. That's the real travesty of losing recall rights. Why a 1500 hour CFI with landings and a flight review beats out a 10,000 hour ATP with three type ratings who hasn't flown for two years is a mystery to me but I've seen it happen every downturn since 9-11 and don't expect it to be any different this time.
The TSA and Compass folks are already pushing 6 months. It's an unmitigated disaster for many of them. Kudos to K4 and AS for hiring some of them but there aren't enough seats for everybody.
I don’t know what Kirby plans for mainline or express. He could be serious about dramatically reducing 50 seaters even though he is scoped out on big rj’s, or the plan could have changed a dozen times between now and when all of this started.
Not being current won’t be as big as a deal as you may think. I didn’t fly for over a year after 9/11, but I was hired by an ACMI company during furlough. My resume and application showed that I had the background to complete training with no issues. Half of my class were furloughed legacy pilots who hadn’t flown in a year, the rest were regional pilots. Those high time 121 pilots will most likely have an experience similar to mine. If you were in charge of hiring new pilots to fly an rj, who would you hire? Would it be the applicant with thousands of hours of 121 jet time and no recall rights because their airline was shut down, or the 1,500 hr CFI that basically knows nothing about flying jets or the airline training fire hose? I know who I’d hire, especially when United starts recalling and then hiring. The regionals are going to need people that can go really fast and someone banging around the pattern in a Cessna just doesn’t have the background to do as well as the currently available competition.