Originally Posted by FriendlyPilot

Yes there will be some retirements. About 200 older planes would be replaced with newer planes. Older 757s , A319/320 and 767-300 replaced with MAX 10, A321-XLR/NEO and 787s. The rest are growth or replacing 440 Regional Jets, which is the bulk of the domestic growth as that flying is brought in-house. Those planes will be parked wherever the RJs are parked now and fly routes the RJs currently fly or flew going from 600 to about 160 RJs total at express. Up-gauging and taking back more domestic RJ flying is the big plan domestically. Also they said there are 100+ more International routes they want to fly but we don't have the planes/pilots to do it. There will also be more pilot bases opened. They expect DEN to go to 900 departures a day, including more international. Also another 777 base opening, either LAX or DEN according to Ankit, who runs the network.

But its all a plan and who knows, but when we can currently hire and train 2,500 a year, and adding a building with 12 sims (2 are open and the rest open in December or January) plus another building that will have 12 more sims, I wonder why they need 24 more sim spaces if we aren't going to grow organically.

Nobody knows what will really happen, but I suspect it will be closer to 28,000 pilots than 20,000 because we don't need any more training capacity to get to 20,000. We could be at 20,000 pilots in 2 years at the current hiring pace, including retirements.