If you are hired at United today you will have 8,000 pilots junior to you in about 4 years. Can you say the same at the airline you are at? We are replacing 400 RJs with mainline planes. These planes are on order, and even in a recession, which we are now, we are still taking the planes. Nobody at a ULCC really knows what airline they will be at in 5 years. Maybe Frontier buys JB etc? Not sure that JB (market cap $2.2B) paying $3.8B cash to buy Spirit with a market cap of $2.1B was a smart move, especially since they are not profitable right now. Also your ULCC base could change, as some of the ULCCs have been pulling back flying because of a lack of pilots.

Its going to get worse over the next 4 years. I think the ULCC model will fail as the big 4 get much bigger.