Originally Posted by
KirillTheThrill
Because they ALWAYS overestimate how many pilots they can train. I entered the industry in late 2015 and heard the same line every year, “we’re going to hire 1,500 to 2000 pilots this year” from the likes of Delta and United. Only Delta had one year where they hired over 1,000 pilots (1,200 total), until of course this recent hiring madness where both will brake 1,000 easy. But generally they never even come close to the numbers they want to actually hire. It’s obviously because you can only train so many men and women each year.
I think any of us who have been in this industry for a while expected 200+/month would eventually overwhelm the system. I’m actually impressed they managed to keep it going as long as they did without taking a break. Kirby & his team seem very focused on aggressive growth, & I don’t see this as a change in that focus- just an adjustment to the reality of our actual training capacity. We’ve had backlogs of 2 months or more waiting for IOE, & it becomes harder to justify bringing new people on property with full pay & benefits when they can’t actually do any work for months.
I think they want to be training as many pilots as they can actually handle, & my guess is that moving forward, they’ll accomplish that in one of two ways.
1. Reduce class sizes/frequency to a number that keeps the flow of new pilots as high as possible without delays.
2. Continue the “balls to the wall” strategy & just take unscheduled breaks from time to time when backlogs get too overwhelming.
In the long term, option 1 would be the most efficient, but it may take an approach that more closely resembles option 2 to settle on that magic number- sometimes you have to exceed a limit to find out where it actually is.