I have seen that, he also made the comment on Skyhub saying they will be getting Pilot Selection ready to start interviewing at the end of the year. Obviously he did not commit that they will be doing interviews, but said they wanted things up and running to start doing them ASAP if needed.

Let me also clarify all I really am saying about training the 1,700 is obviously management seems to think that they will be able to train all the affected pilots fairly quickly if they even are considering starting to do interviews at the end of this year. We all know management over promises and under delivers many times but they must see something in the sim/training world that we don't.

Some number of those ~9800 are NQAT. I don’t know how many, but it’s not small. I could easily see it being the ~400 difference you noted. Easily. Might even be the 800 difference between JL’a number.

NQAT pilots are active pilots, no?

Not in the sense they are available to fly, or better said “actively flying”. Normally, they don’t like to let folks sit NQAT for even a couple weeks. I know several NQAT’s who have been so for 4 & 6 months, to this day don’t have a training date. One is a Mil leave returnee who only needs 2 sims to be a full up round. Still hasn’t trained 2 months later. Unprecedented, as far as I’m aware.

They are massively backed up in some parts of the training dept.

I get that. I’m strictly talking about the words from JL. When he referenced “active pilots”, do you think he was excluding NQAT? I don’t think so.

I highly doubt he was including NQAT, as such, particularly the large numbers we have had for the past year-ish. NQAT has always been negligible.

The MOAD and VEOP accelerated the NQAT problem, so there were going to be NQATs...I doubt they weren’t factored in at least to some degree more than negligible. They knew the training churn this would cause. (Best team in the biz right?)

Irregardlessly(!), I think their demand outlook has certainly increased since the initial assumptions were made last summer.

If the talk of a 3rd PSP comes to fruition, there’s no reason not to bring everyone back if Uncle Sugar is footing the bill.

Certainly if the government is handing more money out, and it appears they are going to according to what Congress said today, that will change this entirely. I'd see a LOT more deferring too.... These times are truly unprecedented....

As much as I hate that word this is in a good way

Unprecedented indeed. The spectrum of COVID experiences across the pilot group is pretty wide. Some folks flying 80-90 (crappy) hard-time trips during COVID layover hell with others sitting 8-9 months at home for full pay. I wouldn’t be opposed to more equitable work-sharing, but have no idea what that fix might look like. Or maybe that’s just life, which I remind my kids frequently just ain’t fair.

More than likely by the time a solution would be implemented it would no longer be needed.

Groups of international guys are getting paid for very little work, although it's always been like this for this group. Not to this extent, but just the way it is.

One of the only ways that I can think of to even things out would be to do away with the RAW reserve system. This really favors the senior pilot. Jr. reserve guys on the intl side of things will do 2 or 3 trips before a senior guy gets one. Why not do what most other airlines do and jr. guy flies first and then goes to the bottom of the list?

Seniority is honored by the senior guys getting their choice of days off. Flying one group while the other does nothing doesn't seem right.