Originally Posted by
ZeroTT
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.
And hiring by the majors, LLCs, and freight dogs is forecast to be 9,000 to 10,000 next year. With forecast coming from the ex military and other pilots, the draw out of the regionals is estimated to be 7,000 this next year, and not all that much less annually in 2023 thru 2030. I agree with you this is not sustainable. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see some regionals will fail due to lack of pilots and the regional airline model will be in for a major restructuring.