So everyone has seen the "pilot shortage" news. From what I have gathered so far, the regionals are hiring at a pretty good clip right now. Even though there is not a true pilot shortage. My question is how long can it last? Are they likely to keep up the hiring frenzy for a long period of time? What do you think?

 

If nothing upsets the apple cart, then it'll continue as long as the legacies, majors and LCCs continue have a big appetite for new pilots.

 

From everything that I've heard, the airlines are going to keep growing. Growth = more airplanes = more pilots. That's good for us!

 

think anyone besides Gojet and TSA will be doing street captains sometime in the next year?

 

That's an insanely difficult question to gauge. There is a reason why those two are hiring DECS (Their management).

If someone had the 121 time and was interested in a DEC position at a regional with "better" management why not just go to a regional that has a relatively quick upgrade time and hope for the best?

 

From going through other posts on this forum, what I see so far is hiring will continue on for the next few years until something big happens... like 9/11, oil prices jump, or the economy tanks. I also read a few posts that think the regionals wont survive after the next 5 years. What do you guys think?

 

Failure of the regional system could occur in one of two obvious scenarios...

1. If major growth continues at a good clip that (combined with mandatory retirements) could exceed the available supply of pilots and cause the majors to need to raid the regional system for pilots. This would probably be good for most pilots as they would either get hired or merged. There would be turmoil for the flying public, as it's unlikely that the majors would execute such a transition smoothly (some small towns would lose service).

2. A shortage of quality pilots resulting in multiple colgan style accidents attributable to poor pilot performance *might* cause congress to end the regional system (ie ban outsourcing or require significantly more experience and screening for CA's. In the recent past regionals which committed high-profile accidents have been quietly euthanized.

How likely are these scenarios? I don't know. The mandatory retirements are going to continue for another ten years.

 

Interesting that you said this. I'm seeing a lot of people going through the flight training process and later, become CFIs but they barely know enough to be competent. Further, they really show no desire to be CFIs and are basically using their students for flight time. I've seen CFIs take people flying in really adverse weather just to grab 0.7 on an intro flight. It makes me wonder if sooner or later, we'll get a CA/FO pairing with sufficiently low experience to see a Colgan 3407 again.

Any idea what the policy is for matching low time CA/FO? How low is low? Based on what I've seen in the past couple of years, I've started avoiding flying on regional airlines at all costs.