To the inevitable young whippersnapper that's 23 years old in the first few new hire classes: Congratulations! You won the lottery! You will be number 1 on the list for the last 15 years of your career. 1964, 1984 and 2014. It's all about timing.

did this actually happen already? or are you just speculating that it will?

That's not speculation it is a fact. The ENTIRE AA seniority list will need to be replaced in the next 20 years. I'm 49 and on the younger side. If you are very young and happen to land in the first few classes you will end up, just by demographics, very vey senior for most of your career.

I get that, I guess I should have known I need to be more specific.

here it is, is there actually a 23 year old in class now or not?

Don't forget about the usair merger. Not saying it won't be good but any new hire will be below them. Usair has hired some young pilots in the last 2 years. But when you factor in how large the new airline would be it will be a great career.

People said this about young guys hired at Pan Am, eastern, TWA, Braniff...

If you think AA is going to take a dump then don't apply. No one knows the future. I'm only talking demographics. Last I checked everybody walks at 65 and we are awfully top heavy. US Airways even more so..

As there are currently no new hire classes there wouldn't be a 23 year old new hire in them. When they do start to hire there will be some young guys in the early classes. There always are, and those people will have pretty golden careers if the ship doesn't sink. That's all I'm trying to say. This pretty much applies to most of the legacy airlines as the seniority lists are pretty old with very few if any new hires in the last 12 years. The cycle is about to reverse. Of course, it's always good to get on in the beginning of a hiring cycle but now even more so.

What year did they say it? 1958? Good advice. 1968? No. 1985? No.
By 1985 they weren't expected to be big players.

Tons of talk about the Big 3 beginning sometime in the late 1980's or in the 1990's. With the merger, excluding SW as the #1 domestic carrier, the Big 3 prediction is pretty accurate.

FTR currently on property there are 426 pilots under 45.

There are AE flowups, AE 824, AE AA rights pilots, and deferrals that are on the list, or will be on the list, that will increase the sub 45 number of pilots. Regardless, being #500-1000 in 20 yrs will be a nice gig.