“pilot shortage” triggers a lot of people. There’s not really a pilot shortage. There are plenty of people who want to be regional FO’s. The problem is captains and especially LCA’s.

An airline cannot magically replace every LCA every three months. You can only make as many captains as you have people with 1000 hours.

skywest is the only regional that might survive that

what are the odds someone who is currently a CA at their regional, watching it burn, would be able to upgrade fairly quickly at OO while they wait for the major / ULCC to call?

Hold tight, everyone is going to get a call.

. Anyone who can do math can see what’s coming but it’s not here quite yet.

I wouldn’t make an unforced lateral move

they sent a email out to all FO’s saying there are over 100 upgrade spots on the CRJ for january. Please put your bid in. It was under 2 years last bid. And with low TT newhires. I would bet upgrade drops to Newhires that have the time soon.

To clarify, there isn’t a shortage of FOs willing to upgrade. There’s a shortage of FOs willing to upgrade into the bases OO needs and live the dreaded ‘commute to regional reserve’ life.

There are currently *plenty* of folks with an upgrade bid in, just not a lot of them have the ANY at the end. 🤷🏻‍♂️

70 additional Captain openings for DTW, and another 30 or so for ORD on the CRJ. Plus, they'll need to backfill for this month's attrition and transfers. After downsizing DTW a while back now it's nearly doubling in size. (Which DL partner can't staff its flying?) CRJ captain pays a minimum of $75k a year and they are begging people to do it. And someone upgrading in January could easily break $100k in 2022.

This doesn't look good for CRJ to ERJ transitions in the spring.

although hiring 300/month suggests that even 1000 people able to upgrade might not be plenty for long

ZeroTT has it right. Skywest will be here in 10 years but it will be smaller. As airframes get replaced by mainline aircraft, (DL and UAL), and pilot retention becomes harder and harder, it will naturally shrink or be absorbed by a mainline carrier to keep pilots. Flight attendants will be the only real losers as they lose jobs in droves when the regionals shrink and disappear,

Regional airlines are going to shrink but I expect skywest will grow. If Air Minnesota closes because it can only staff 30/50 CrJ-200’s… somebody can scoop up some of the leftovers. That someone is likely to be Skywest