Correction to typo (above)
 

The part where it says hired 800 less in 2025 than 2022 should have been 8000 less.

I’ll put my proven crystal ball against yours or most other folks.

It’s going to be fast enough to clear out the candidate pool waiting and drive upgrades back to 121.436 minimums
the regional training contracts are dropping like rocks in arbitration and courts so those junior captains will be leaving quickly also

For them to leave they will have to have someplace to go. For the last three years, United has been doing a major expansion, hiring about 6000 pilots during that time. AA has been hiring heavily and Delta too to a lesser extent. And as a consequence, they wound up hiring people less experienced and - more importantly for the purpose of this discussion - YOUNGER than the historical norms. But nobody can rapidly expand forever because there is admittedly an increasing but still finite demand out there. As I have posted, only UA and Delta are making serious money. NK has been forced into bankruptcy (twice) and has severely cut back their flying with concomitant furloughs, downgrades, and displacements. F9 has the same business model as NK and while not yet in bankruptcy is dealing with many of the same problems. . WN is trying to change its business model to better handle competition with the Big Three. Most of the rest of the majors are fairly small and also have very young pilot groups on average.

Young pilot groups mean few retirements from the group and for the Big Three their retirements will peak shortly and then decline for a long time due to the relatively young (by historical standards) people recently hired. These are the near term numbers:

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Perhaps United and Delta can keep on expanding for a few more years. Perhaps NK can avoid Chapter 7 and sending another 2k of highly experienced A320 series pilots to the other majors. Perhaps Boeing can get the MAX7 certified and pump up the hiring for WN for a few years. Perhaps we’ll get into it with Iran and the military will invoke stop loss and separating/retiring military fixed wing fliers won’t be taking up 1k to 1.5k of the major new hire CJOs like they have been for the last…forever. On the other hand, Age 67 or single pilot ops could bring hiring to a near stop for anywhere from a couple of years to a couple of decades. Lots of things CAN happen.

But the era of quick hiring to the majors FROM THE REGIONALS seems to be approaching an end. A few more years of major expansion are likely to saturate the market and increased demand in many areas will be managed by upguaging from CRJs and EMB170s to A220s, MAX7s, and A320s. At that point hiring to the majors will be governed pretty much by replacement of retiring pilots which for the foreseeable future is going to be 3000 or less, and with all the very young people hired in the last 4-5 years, likely much less in the next two or three decades. And historically at least 1k of these will be military retirees, although some of these might do the regional touch and go.

Now all things are possible, but some are a whole lot more probable than others. Personally, I don’t believe in “proven” crystal balls, or trust in the predictions of those who do.

Why your crystal ball is optimistic…
 

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Because regional pilots are also competing against retiring/separating fixed wing military pilots who are recruited even before they have left active duty and then fast tracked into the majors…

Which regionals have dropped the hiring contracts as the result of arbitration or court ruling? The one RPA introduced in May 2023 was upheld when it finally had its day in court (IAM lost that battle) so that contract remains with some mods, but they weren't forced by the court.

your own graph shows almost 3,000 a year for the next decade and a half.
what is your definition of going to a legacy quick?
the movement will be brisk, they’ll get their 1,000 121 PIC and be gone. At the peak they’ll be grabbing them under 1,000 PIC. I think the days of FO’s going from finishing OE and consolidating to poof off to a legacy are over without excellent connections or lots of military time.
not eceybody being hired is 25 year old kids. They’re doing a much better job of hiring at multiple age brackets. You won’t see a massive baby boom retirement like the perfect storm we’re just about on the back half of.
these guys coming on now are going to have the fantastic careers we all should have had. It’s about time. Guys in our time did very well over time, these guys will do great. Well overdue

Could you please find me a chart of the airline industry growing aggressively for a decade and a half straight?

All of this sophomoric analysis is taking the last 3 years and extrapolating it linearly into the future. About 100 years of industry history disputes that.

Regional FOs will upgrade quickly until regional CAs stop getting hired somewhere else quickly. Maybe that will be in 3 years, maybe it will be in 5. But it will definitely be.

After that regional CA and FO salaries will go down. A few years later all CA and FO salaries will go down. Are we the generation smart enough to stop what has happened since the DC-3? I'm going to take the under, even though I wish it were not so.

3000 a year TOTAL HIRING of which ~1200 a year will be from the military fixed wing retired and separating leaving ~1800 a year spread among people from the Part 91 and Part 135 world as well as the 121 world. Currently, regional flyers number ~ 18,000 pilots, meaning if All Hiring was done from only the regional pilots, that would mean that someone starting today could expect to go to a major in about ten years. Of course, that is a simplification, because some pilots WILL be hired from the Part 91 world and some regional pilots will NEVER make it into the majors and some odds and sods will come in from Canada or flying SIC from foreign flag carriers, even foreign military (I know a couple of former Canadian military airline pilots).

So yeah, barring massive expansion it’ll be somewhat of a bell shaped curve with the median somewhere maybe 9-11 years, slower for the guys picking up a DUI or some training failures along the way, faster from some guy marrying a major airline CEOs homely daughter,
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The question will be to what degree mild-moderate expansion happens. 2-3% a year major growth with the regionals scope-choked speeds progression considerably.

Airports and airspace already at max capacity so where is all this growth going to go? Into Ghana? I realize that Kirby has grandiose plans but the guy is foolish and his growth won't happen unless he acquires another airline (Jetblue) which will not impact overall hiring, as a matter of fact may it may hinder it as one airline can hire more efficiently then two.

Really nothing has changed. Pilots that want to move on need to be continuously improving their resume. Get that 1000 TPIC as soon as they can and if they still don't get bites, then move onto a ULCC or ACMI for more type ratings in bigger aircraft.