A few more months of instructing? At Pan Am (in PHX) we all had more students than we could handle and the best I ever did was 134 hours in 30 days. My average at PAIFA was around 90/month with weather that allowed 365 days of flying. How many hours do you gain in an ATP 0-Hero course? 200? 250? 300? That means he/she still needs 1200 hours to meet the 1500TT mins. At an average of 100/month it will take him/her at least 12 months and more than likely longer seeing that the number of FAA enrollments are decreasing due to lack of financing. Plus how many FAA students do PAIFA, DCA and ATP take in every year? Maybe 300-400 between the three (80-90% are now foreign) and not all of them will have the work ethic to work that many hours. That's not near enough to cover demand, just look at how quickly we ran through CFI's a few years ago. And the topper? Imagine what the regionals would have done 3 years ago if 1500TT were the 121 mins. Pilot pay would more than likely be higher than it is today just so they could attract 135er’s and furloughees. His buffer is all we need, it will create a real shortage of pilots willing and able to work for crappy regionals wages after just a few short years of mainline hiring.

Plus let’s say they one or two of these 0-Hero pilots can average 150 hours per month and in June of the same year ends up with the opportunity to get hired by a 121 operator. No airline’s going to hire a pilot who can only fly another 100 hours before they time out for the year. (6 X 150 = 900 – 1000 = 100)