Originally Posted by Castle Bravo

Because when the Majors are faced with their own contraction due to staffing issues...they could care less about the minor leagues. And we won't reach peak retirements until 2025 and beyond! Lets say Major X loses 1,000 pilots in a year to mandatory retirement. To keep the status quo schedule, at a minimum they have to hire 1000 new pilots. Thus (roughly) 800 pilots are hired from the regionals (rest from Mil/135). They will decimate the regionals to maintain the status quo at the Major. They will "do whatever it takes" to keep their own selves afloat! Survival of the fittest, Darwinism, whatever you want to call it.

The real problem is FOs. The regionals can (and are) hiring FOs like crazy, but they legally can't become a CA until they reach 1000 hrs Pt 121. And you can't achieve that if your planes are parked due to CA attrition. Then the Majors will start poaching highly qualified FOs. Now the regional is getting robbed from the top and the bottom, and the hub and spoke system deteriorates. We just can't produce enough FOs fast enough unless Congress makes changes to the 1500 hr rule, the 1000 hr/2500TT CA rule, etc, I think the puppy mill flight universities will need to graduate kids in 3 yrs vice 4. But even that will be too late.

If the airline industry wants to maintain it's current level of capacity (assuming demand remains level) we will need a WWII style production effort...Reduce minimum required hours, reduce graduation time at the Univ's, raise ticket prices for pax, increase domestic wide body flying to make up for loss of regional capacity, yada yada yada.

Oh, and don't forget, the Military can turn off the spigot with Stop Loss any time they choose.