$40k in a pretty good year.

Why is delta and ual planning to start ab initio pilot training, if there is no shortage?

Here comes Age 67 - 70.

If so, there needs to be a cognitive test and better hearing test. I've seen too many past 60 that aren't sharp anymore and are half deaf.

Republic just raised starting pay to 40$/hr and looks like UNITED is gonna raise pay by 13%. Good or bad...?

Be careful what you wish for. A lot of young bucks might not pass any increased medical standards. Maybe you...

Could it be the candidates they are getting do not have the habit patterns and professionalism they are looking for? A lot of things in America have been dumbed-down over the last several years.

For typical airline pilots, you can generally count on being paid for 1000 hours in a year. So $40 per hour is only $40 grand.

But that pay is flight hours, so don't think that it means you'll simply be able to work a "20 hour week" for that. When you measure it in terms of "Time Away From Base," which is how many hours your car is in the parking lot (and you are away from home), the numbers get much worse. You'll spend an average of three hours away from base for every hour of flight pay. The rest is unpaid time between flights or at hotels.

So expect to be gone up to 300 hours a month, or 70 hours per week (and that's if you DON'T commute), for your 100 hours of flight pay.

Hope that helps.

And here I thought airline pilots got into the gig for "the incredible time off it affords them". Or did you mean to make a distinction between regional airlines and major airlines?

At the risk of being the "turd in the punch bowl" how much of the current situation can be resolved with better pay under current regulations? It seems that this "shortage" has been over a decade in the making - it costs a lot of time and money to get to ATP mins and the payout sucks. Seems like reason enough to upset the supply/demand equilibrium. Not to say that if it suddenly became lucrative to be a regional pilot that there wouldn't be a considerable number of applicants in 2-4 years, but are there enough dormant ATP qualified pilots out there to supply the regionals as they currently exist and set the bar higher than fogging a mirror?