Major Airline Hiring 2020
 

I figured this deserved its own thread.

According to official announcements, here are the hiring plans for 2022.


Alaska: 167
Allegiant: 184
American: 1500+ (goal is over 1800)
Delta: 1800
FedEx: 800
Frontier: 600
JetBlue: 600
Southwest: 1200
Spirit: 400
United: 1500 (goal is over 1800)
UPS: 260


That will be about 9000 pilots hired in a year at major airlines in the US, provided that these airlines can find enough pilots to hire and training departments can keep up.

The real question is, which regionals will be the first to fall? I would expect at least a few regionals are parking large percentages of their fleet in early Spring.

That is the way I got it figured.

While some will come from the military, and some from others, the bulk will be from the regionals. Regionals have 20,000 pilots, CA and FO combine.

The real problem for the regionals is that they are primarily going to lose captains, and there will not be qualified pilots to replace them.

For some regionals yes. SkyWest has a decent cadre of lifers that will hang out to keep the lights on, and legacies will begin sniping FOs quickly too as choosing between someone with 1000 hours in the right seat + 100 hours in the left seat vs choosing someone who has 900 hours in the right seat will be of minimal difference to them.

Expect to see a massive return of the E-3 visa program too. Lots of Australian pilots that are out of work too, with no hope left in their home country.

Hopefully the unions in the US will fight this tooth and nail. The last thing that any of us need are foreign pilots coming in and driving down wages and the leverage that we have. We fought off the NAI carriers, now we need to fight off the E-3's.

The only thing Australians should be able to apply for is refugee status from their oppressive regime

your spirit number may be wrong. 400 was the hiring number for 2021.

planning 72/month for 2022, so 800 give or take

Agreed. Regionals have been exploiting E-3 visas to get cheap temporary labor for years. They need to go.

My prediction a few years ago was shrinkage by 50% of the pilots flying the regionals (i.e. 10,000 down from 20,000) and a shrinkage of 75% of the number of regional airlines. People scoffed at me. Said we would never see that. Well…..get ready.

…very interesting, I wonder what those of us just beginning flight training can expect in a few years. I’m in my early 30’s and took a while because of “life”, plus, I wanted to save and pay for my flight training in one go, anyways, we shall see what the future holds.