This is sorta more than a pilot market event.


this is a “how many pilots can be sustainably harvested from the regionals” event.

The industry has had 30 years of bankruptcies and terror attacks and recessions and reg changes and finally now a pandemic keeping a lid on its fundamental staffing problem.

New hires aren’t really the problem. It’s keeping them around long enough to be captains and line check airmen. Four years is really an absolute minimum… which means that a 20,000 pilot industry can provide at most 5,000 hires per year. And that is if the hiring and getting-to-1000 and upgrade machine is humming.

But more likely hiring 5000 in a year … who will be mostly captains and LCA’s will collapse the system. Still 15,000 regional pilots but not the ones they need in the right place.