Kirby on pilot shortage
 

United Airlines was forced to cut service to 11 secondary cities across the midwestern USA beginning in January due to the pilot shortage, the company’s chief executive officer says.

“It’s down to pilots,” Scott Kirby tells viewers of the Skift Aviation conference on 17 November. The pilot shortage is now real, we don’t have enough pilots to fly all the airplanes. It’s very simple.”


https://www.flightglobal.com/network...146481.article

The shortage is with experience to upgrade or sticking around to be an LCA. If they paid better than $36 an hour for FOs that could somewhat help solve their problem too. But in the end even with $50 an hour FOs seniority is king and people will move on and not care about bonuses that take forever to get etc.

“Shortage” by keeping pilots at regionals on purpose in order to keep wages low… yawn

There has never been a pilot shortage.

That lie was kept alive by Kit Darby for years to sell his services. For decades, it was just around the corner. There is no shortage, and never was.

yes it’s a compensation shortage… and they’re dropping routes because of it

The big 6 have forecast to hire 9,000 pilots next year. That is an all time record.

That means about 7,000 that will be hired from the regionals.

The regional have about 20,000 pilots. If half are captains, that is 10,000 captains.

It is generally considered about 10% of regional pilots are lifers. That would be 2,000. If the lifers are all captains, 10,000 - 2,000 = 8,000 captains that could be hired.

These numbers are not perfect. Anyway you slice it, though, that is more going out of the regionals than GA training to 1,500 hours and regional new hire training can handle to backfill.

As the ancient proverb says, May you live in interesting times. We have never seen these numbers moving in a year, ever.

Well you also have military guys applying and such. I’m sure a lot of us will still never hear anything no matter what shortage talk comes to.

Exactly how many military pilots do you think will be applying? Also, how many of those will not have immediate military commitments so they are actually available now to fly?

The number of military pilots that are available right now is a pretty small number compared to the number of airline pilots needed.

Typically about 1,000 come out of the military and make the jump to the majors each year.

About 1,000 come out of 91 and 135 each year, Those are already included in the math.

9,000 hires - 1,000 Mil - 1,000 from 91/135 = 7,000 from the regionals.



You realize the hiring is nearly double the all time record numbers to be hired by the majors.

Realize these are all fairly accurate, but not precise, numbers.

The majors are hiring a lot from Spirit and Frontier too so have to factor those in.

Best move is to get out of the regionals asap for better pay and QOL.. get an Airbus type rating along the way and then go to a major. Would rather get stuck at a LCC for a few years than a regional making **** pay and with awful reserve rules and scheduling that violates the contract every day.