Regional CA Upgrade Times
 

Curious what regional CA upgrade times are looking like these days. I know it varies by carrier, but are we back to pre-2023 timelines or still relatively quick? Hearing mixed things from guys at different regionals.

Are you really asking for upgrade times among all the regionals?!

I'd say 1000-3000 hours, 1 year after hitting mins to 5 years.

define relatively quick…. During the lost decade guys waited 11 years to upgrade at a regional and there were no mainline jobs to go to. After about 14 years they made it to a legacy. They then sat right seat another 10 years..

so, what’s relatively quickly?

Even upgrading at 3,000 TT is a gift by historical standards.


The real story is don’t even look at it. Upgrade times change fast and often. With all the increased mainline hiring, it’s about to drop again. Trying to,pick a regional by upgrade times is frankly stupid. It will change before you get hired, and again while your building hours.

Go to a regional where you don’t have to commute, if the music ever stops, and just based upon history it will again…. You want to be someplace you could stay at if you had to. For this same reason, your regional contracts DO matter. You don’t give anything up ever. That’s how the race the bottom started last time.

Give us this, we’ll grow the regional bigger, you’ll upgrade faster, get your pic faster and go to a legacy faster. Big clue, you don’t want the regional to grow. You want the legacy to grow.
Then they’ll demand more concessions to be competitive and avoid downsizing or you’ll lose your left seat and never get enough pic to leave.

The unions have a chance to make a standard pilot contract that matches each other across the industry while we still have some leverage, that removes the we have to be cheaper pilots than them because their costs are less and they will get the contracts. Make our pay/benefits the same and there’s no cost advantage to whipsaw.

Regional Ca upgrade times are driven by statute (must have 1000 121 SIC time) and loss of those senior to you (both FO and CA) to the majors. Major hiring has decreased rather dramatically in the past from 12-13k annually in 2022-2023 to less than 5k in 2024 and 2025.

https://www.fapa.aero/pilot-hiring-history

Currently the peak of age 65 retirements is still a year or so ahead but hiring from regionals is being adversely affected by furloughs and people jumping ship from NK. While there will be some expansion once Boeing, Airbus, and P&W get their supply chains and quality control straightened out it is likely that major hiring will be back toward the historical norm once all those things shake out of ~4000 - 4500 pilots a year.

Some of those will be direct from the military hires and Part 91 guys but someone applying to a regional today should probably anticipate at least 3 years to become eligible for upgrade and then spending at least another three years as a regional CA before moving on unless they have prior military or other TPIC experience. Of course a black swan event could make that worse - much worse.

If you are starting intro at a regional today you have 18,000 regional guys senior to you, and probably 8000 are FOs who will upgrade before you.

Whatever you are hearing is, at best, the time for people who started 18 months ago.

The tails of the bell curve are

1) Majors Hiring at Vne - you saw that post-covid. Unlikely to return
2) Majors not hiring at all - essentially impossible over the next decade as baby boom finishes retirement.

So the best expectation is something that fits within historical norms. It will take a few years, FO's will compete for upgrades.

Addendum:

Things may be slightly slower than the historical norm because NK (Spirit) is in bankruptcy for the second time in a year following a court refusal to allow it to merge, and Chapter 7 is a distinct possibility. Already about two thousand pilots with major airline experience and a type rating in Airbus 320 series aircraft have hit the market through furlough or attrition and the legacies are snapping these people up, if NK does go chapter 7, the remaining ~2000 pilots will also be competing - generally quite successfully - for legacy hiring slots. That alone can be expected to extend the time for regional pilots to go to the majors (and free up regional CA slots) by a full year.

Frontier also lost money in 2025, becoming profitable (~45 million) in the 4th quarter but not nearly enough to make up for the $190 million loss in the first three quarters. They are trying to convert from their historic ULCC model to a more economically viable one. They may or may not be successful but - at least for awhile - they do not appear to be looking towards expansion and with a fairly young workforce will probably continue to limit their hiring from historical levels.

that brings us to B6 (JetBlue) which was also affected by the DOJ and court decision to deny merger with NK. B6 has lost ~$1.4 billion over the last two years and are in the process of trying to convert their LCC model to something more economically viable. They have done little if any hiring this year according to FAPA

https://www.fapa.aero/pilot-hiring-history

Next up is American Airlines Group. The good news is that they had record revenue this year ($54 billion) but the bad news is that they had a fairly measly $111 million in profit in 2025, down over 80% from 2024. They are handicapped by needing to devote a fair share of what would have been profit to debt service (about $1.7 billion a year in principal and interest) and are successfully managing early repayment on some of the principal.

now the good news is that United and Delta are just sort of printing money and all three of the larger legacies still have fairly high retirements for the next several years, but it really does appear that things are “reverting to the mean” and that’s going to slow major hiring with consequent slowing of regional upgrade quite a bit compared to the recent past.

Really appreciate everyone taking the time to share real-world timelines and experiences. This is exactly the kind of info that helps people make better decisions. Thanks again.

Rjet: 1200hrs since hire 5/2024. Upgrade is 5/2026.

disagree with your timeline, therecwere roughly 18,000 regional pilots back in the early teens before the shrinking. Today there are probably only roughly 16,000-17,000 regional pilots… if that, it may be even less now. Mainline hiring alone will be over 7,500 pilots this year. That will suck 75% of current regional captains and even some lucky FO’s right out of the regional system…. Not including folks leaving for very good ACMI jobs,

by the end of summer, you’ll see guys upgrading as soon as they hit 1000 121 or other qualifying 135 time. You’ll see street hire captains again by 2027….and at more carriers again, as well as more double time pay.

The current glut of CFI’s waiting since hiring slowed in mid to late 2024 will only fulfill the need a short time. We were recently producing 10,000 new ATP’s each year, but that includes those getting their type/ATP as a new hire. In the 20 teens we produced about 2,000 new ATP’s a year.

You are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine and the good thing about being a pessimist is that most of your surprises are happy ones. But right now NK is in its second bankruptcy, and still burning money, JetBlue is losing money although they hope to break even by 2007, and Frontier - while making a modest 4th quarter profit - still lost $137 million for the year and is downsizing by 20 A320s (and associated crews) in an attempt to get back in the black. American, despite record revenue of $54.6 BILLION, only netted a profit of $237 MILLION. Southwest Airlines is doing better but right now they are sort of hamstrung by Boeing’s years long delay in getting the MAX7 certified.

The majors as a group hired 300 less in 2025 than they did in 2024, 7500 less than in 2023, 800 less than in 2022, and 1500 less than in 2021, and about 2000 of those who were hired were hired from NK who was furloughing and displacing people.

https://www.fapa.aero/pilot-hiring-history



Now you also have the retiring/separating military pilots to figure into your calculations (United has a special program for them). https://careers.united.com/us/en/uni...-pilot-program
as does Delta. https://www.deltatakingaction.com/co...ry-pilots.html
Historically, 75% of retiring/separating military fixed wing pilots become major airline pilots.

Now I’m not trying to rain on anybody’s picnic but if you look at the FAPA numbers major hiring has hit 7500 or better only twice in the past 25 years, the total hired in the 25 year span was 85,019 for an average of 3408 a year. And that’s actually an over count because as many as 15% of those are people who may have started at a ULCC or LCC or cargo then jumped to their career major after acquiring more experience.

What we are seeing is a regression toward the mean. The two years of extremely high hiring was largely an artifact of the majors that offered people early retirement early in COVID and the unexpectedly fast recovery of flying from COVID.

It’s not that I don’t wish regional folks well, most of us started our 121 career there, but the real story is a lot more complicated than your analysis IMHO.