AA to hire 1500
 

Over 5 years...haha gotcha.

There is no pilot shortage, never will be. Article is on jetnet someone will link it I'm sure.

That 1500 includes the contractual eagle flows as well. Guess if you're a bottom 824 guy you'll be waiting another 6+ years for that lottery ticket to come due.

So how many commercial pilots with 1500hrs will be apply at the regionals next year?

Hiring projections;

American 300
United 500
Delta 300
Southwest 200
Frontier 100ish
Spirit?
JetBlue?
FedEx?

So that's roughly 1500 pilots, take into account that RJs will shrink next year by numbers the effects won't be greatly felt but as you approach the end of the decade the retirements number increase substantially and we will see a huge increase in hiring while new pilots continue to decrease. You can be inmature and make comments like this or you can't see that regionals will struggle next summer and beyond. Don't forget the growing Asia market and US airlines growing as well as new rest requirements.

Delta will be closer to 600 next year

There will be a "regional" pilot shortage you're right. 10 years from now? Who knows, that's longer than I have to get a job past the regional level so irrelevant for me.

Maybe this career will be good for guys who are ~15 years old right now, but those of us who are already in it? Not so much.

There are many of us in our 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's & 60's who will have great careers in aviation, could it be better... Yes, could it get worse... Yes, are things improving...yes, why are you such a pessimist, life is short... Enjoy it, speaking of enjoyment I am heading to the pool :D

Which is a huge improvement compared to how many they've hired in the past 5 years... I'm not sure why you're trying to turn that into bad news.

1500/5=300 pilots per year

300 is .017% of the roughly 17000 regional pilots in the US. Good luck with your lottery ticket.

As to the people having good careers in aviation that's all relative. I've said it before I'm 30 years old and even that is too old for the type of airline career I wanted. Flying with 14 days off the rest of my career is not ideal no matter the monetary value of my hours flown. My goal was to doze for dollars in the right seat with 21 days off a month and realistically that's not attainable unless you get hired very young and at the beginning of a wave.

This announcement is not "bad" news but it isn't good either, this is certainly no shortage.

1.7% /yr, and that's just the average over 5 years for American excluding US Airways. Add in the hiring by all the other US based airlines, plus foreign jobs... it's going to be one of the better decades to be a regional guy looking to get out than we've had in awhile.

All that hiring, it's just around the corner, just you wait!

People can say a lot about pilots but the optimism in the face of overwhelming negative evidence is something to be admired.

You better hope there's not a grade school math test on the interview.