Originally Posted by CFIsoonToBeFO

Obviously you have not went thru many years at the airlines yet, nor a bankrutpcy yet. Every Major Airline has filed bankruptcy, and some more than once, and they will cut/kill your contract to shreds during the process. So either lower the mins, bring on more pilots, problem solved for awhile........or raise prices to where customers decide to drive vs fly all while you have to cancel flights due to no pilots (again making the customer choose to drive and not fly even more, UA and DL have cut service to 18 cities which now some of those cities don't even have air service anymore), the airlines loose revenue, airlines then decide to increasing wages to astronomical rates (which hey, pay raises are good), then they fill the seniorty list, then file bankruptcy like they always do and cut your wages to less than they are now.........The Airline Industry is a pendulum, it has happend before and will happen again.....Or just have Congress/FAA raise retirment age to 70 or 75 as long as you keep your 1st class medical. Enjoy being on reserve an extra 10 years.....without that widebody upgrade to CPT (costing you thousands or millions towards retirement)......The fact remains there are less and less students going to school to become a pilot due to the training cost....have the airlines bare some of these cost, that would benefit everyone....the company would secure a pilot before other airlines get ahold of him/her, and more students could afford to attend pilot school. Otherwise today's kids/students (parents) are not interested in paying 100k plus to go work a job where any major hiccup causes a bankruptcy/furloughs/etc.....Think of it, go to school for a 4-yr degree to get the rATP of 1000 elgibilty, then you graduate with 300 hrs TT, now you have to go work (or rent a plane) for another 700 hours....so 5 years of your life, to go work for a Regional another 5 years before going to a Major where you need to be at least on year 2 pay scale, to make decent pay......Now tell me who wants to go 12 years of their life making hardly any money...........They can be a welder/plumber/electrician with less debt and more income over that same 12 year period....It wouldn't be till the 15-20 year timeframe before they see a pay difference......Then it's bankruptcy time, now back to making **** wages......Tell me again why my child should be a pilot? Even if you reduce the mins to rATP at 750, that only cuts 1 year off the timeframe......so with all that being said, the student population is dwindling........with that being said, your current cfi's aren't logging 100+ hours anymore, your foreign students are still not allowed into the country to train....so the timeframe for a cfi to fly a 172 in the pattern for 1500 hours, has gone from 1.5 years to about 3-4 years......so the cfi's are leaving the profession......do you want them to leave and come to your airline as a low time f/o, or just leave in general.....when there are no new hires, there are no upgrages, there is years long of reserve lines.......trust me I've seen it...I been flying since 1996......it is a pendulum.....when they raised the retirement age from 60 to 65, that killed a lot of upgrades, costing f/o's thousands, costing regional pilots millions in wages.....