Raising the retirement age would temporarily reduce retirements and slow regional attrition. When the retirement age was raised before, everyone said that it would only set things back a couple of years since most would leave at 62-63. The fact is that very few did, and I’d suspect that very few will if it is raised again. The overwhelming majority of pilots will take the money as long as they can.

 

Would you be able to fly past 65 in ICAO since they are 65?
If not, then the senior 777 CA would have to downgrade to domestic routes only and i don't see them doing that...

 

I'd bet more than half Of WB CAs would do it.

 

Yep. Not to mention all the instructor turnover that will happen. Atleast in the military you had instructors that were locked in rank/ position for a year or two so there is somewhat of a consistency. Won’t be the case at republic

 

Actually it may fix the problem. The retirement age moves 3 years and brings three years of seniority stagnation at the Legacies, hiring is going to dramatically slow down to a pace we saw before COVID.

 

Only if most legacy pilots stay past 65, and are willing to transition to a domestic fleet which will accommodate them with US-only schedules. Some will of course but enough to make a big dent in the problem? We'll have to wait and see.

 

No you cannot per current rules.

 

How many Widebody captains will stay past 65 if it means multi leg domestic days?

 

My hypothesis is it won't be enough to make a real dent in the problem. Not to mention the stress on the training system as it flows them back down, and then has to replace them again in 2-3 years. All the sims are going to rather busy as it is for the rest of the decade.

Time will tell. Assuming it passes. I think it will eventually but maybe not immediately.

 

In all reality the push to reduce the 1500 hours has nothing to do with the idea of the quality of pilots coming into the industry. Look back at what the starting pay was for pilots who could sit right seat with a wet commercial certificate versus now. Again it’s not a pilot shortage, it’s a shortage of pay and QOL. There are copious amounts of 135/61 pilots out there who could make the jump to 121. They don’t want to because they don’t want to take a pay cut, or they don’t want to get slapped around by crew scheduling for 4-5 days and have to try and commute on oversold flights to a $300+ crash pad in ORD/NYC/DCA.

I guarantee if the 1500 rule was reduced there would be such an influx of bright eyed shiny jet syndrome kids that companies wouldn’t feel the pressure to improve contracts and make themselves more desirable.