I just flew with a LCA at my airline and he had an interesting thing to say about the lack of pilots in the pool to be hired by the Major Airlines. He said that he has a good friend within our hiring department who told him that there is only about 28-36 months supply in the hiring pool to be hired by the Major/Legacy Carriers. His friend says that there are several issues powering this, such as the Military is not supplying many pilots and there really is not that many in the Regional world. This is all based upon current models for being qualified and competitive.

I also had another LCA (who did my IOE), tell me that in a check airmen meeting, they were being told that it wasn't going to be long before my airline was going to have to start looking at CFIs to fill positions. I did not think that things were moving this quickly.

How was Kit Darby to fly with?

Nope, wasn't him.

Well, if a check airman said it...did he read it on the internet?

Good. Sh!tcan the regionals and bring it all back to mainline. That'd be a nice start.

If I'm not mistaken, there are 25,000 "regional" airline pilots currently flying in the US. Assuming 20% are lifers, that leaves 20,000 that could move up. Assume maybe 75% of them will get jobs at the majors, that's 15,000. Then add maybe 5000 military pilots?

So, there are maybe 20,000 pilots that could fill seats at the majors? If the big 3 hire 750/ year, and SWA hires 400/ year, that's 2650/ year. Add in the LCCs, which together make maybe 750/ year? So how about a grand total of 3500 pilots getting hired at the "majors" per year? And assuming there is roughly a current pool of 20,000 pilots, the majors shouldn't run out of pilots for at least 5 and a half years. Of course there are new pilots training all the time, and at least some new military pilots as well.

The way I see it, the majors should be able to hire without much trouble for 5 years. The regionals on the other hand are in big big trouble... which is good for all pilots, except the guys who want to be lifers at their current RJ gig. Anyone have a problem with my numbers?

I think overall those are conservative numbers but that seems pretty accurate to me. Interesting times ahead.

Then there's always the inevitable depression/oil price shock/war/retirement age hike that will come along and "rescue" the airlines from their dilemma....

Once Norwegian is up and running, the majors are going to need a lot less pilots.

If you look at Delta's model of buying interest in other int'l airlines, a lot less American pilots will be needed.