I'm curious how many applications are on file these days at different companies?

A couple years back most of the legacy carriers were saying they had about 10,000 applications on file. I'm curious if that number has changed?

We had a jumperseater today that was a relatively newhire at one of the AA wholly owned regionals, and he was saying that they were told AA has 19,000 applications on file . The FO and I were trying to figure out of that's anywhere close to true?? (or, perhaps, it was someone in that company's recruiting trying to scare applicants away from other regionals...)

Most likely true. I heard 20,000 apps easy at Delta. It makes sense because almost no one you talk to gets a phone call from those types of places... haha

When I was at the SWA career fair last year, they had almost 2000 applicants apply within the first few hours of the application window opening.

The 19000 apps on file at Delta are more than likely the same apps that are on file at American, United...etc. And out of those 19000 apps how many are actually hiring qualified and not a CFI's with 500hrs? When you think about it in that light the pool of available pilots really isn't that big when compared to upcoming retirements.

It's probably 5k - 7k highly qualified apps at most big majors.... But it's the same 7k.

That is about what I am hearing (3k - 7k). Just a few years ago most of the 20,000 RJ Pilots (both CA and FO) would qualify. Some are lifers. A good portion would be highly qualified.

With the movement in the RJs, few FO and newly minted CA (half of the CA?) would be considered highly qualified. (If you are doing math, don’t forget to subtract out lifers, about 2,000 CA.)

Add to that other non-121 highly qualified and exMil (not sure that many exMil highly qualified are out there any more; apps in, just waiting on a call.)

Considering the big 6 now are hiring 4,000 per year (and will increase as the peak of retirements hit), things are going to get real interesting.

There's really no difference in training someone to fly a EMB170 vs an EMB190, A320, or 737.

In other words, the majors can be picky now because they have that option, but you can't discard all the other thousands of >1,500 TT piston guys out there.

There’s a lot of different demographics in the “never hurts to apply” category. It’s probably (hopefully) close to 50% of the applications...

If I was a CFI with 1,500 hours I could apply. I would not be considered one of the highly qualified. And, realistically, I would not expect a call.

Back in March at my AA interview one of the hiring captains mentioned AA had 15k applications, of which half were qualified. Not sure what he meant by qualified, but he made it sound like half had some sort of negative discriminator and are not being looked at (whether it was DUIs, no degree, multiple checkride failures, did not meet company hiring mins in some way I do not know), leaving the other half of the guys/gals on the list.

Also of note is that AA says they do not have a pilot hiring shortage, ie the 7-8k applications on file, but there is a regional pilot shortage.