When I hired on at Horizon Air in the late 1990's I was the lowest time guy in my class with 4000 hours. Skywest and others had a similar line up of new hires. A few were getting on at some of the lessor companies with 1500 hours but it wasn't all that common. The industry was still soaking up pilots who were laid off years prior. Nearly a third of my class was made up of high time pilots who had been laid off from other carriers.

I expect that for a long while that is what the hiring situation will be like at the regionals unless human resources departments decide to avoid hiring experienced pilots. Plenty of newly separated military pilots had to take positions at the regionals to wait for the majors to start hiring again.

SkyHigh