28,000 Pilots
 

How do we get there by the end of the decade? Serious and non-serious responses only.

Social media had the 'girl math' joke going around, I'd love to see some pilot math on this.

Well sniff test is

320 weeks til 2030
Approx 16,000 pilots at current rate


Current pilots + 16000 - retirees somewhere around 28,000

It’s mathematically plausible

Buy F9 and AS, gets us to 21500.

Beware when this house of cards gets blown down by what's coming. You never know what "what" is until it's here. Could take us to 13,200 pilots with 3300 on the street, if we furloughed the same percentage as 2001.

Different industry. 7 legacies were flying 3 pilot airplanes at 60% load factor in 2000 and the regionals were mostly prop.

Not nearly so much fat to cut

Point taken. We were "fat" with 102,000 employees (same as today) producing less than half the revenue we do today. However, load factors in 2000 were in the 70s and there were a total of 75- 3 pilot airplanes flying on 9/11/01 (just 12% of the fleet). The DC-10 (3/01) and 747 rope start (11/00) had already been retired.

https://media.corporate-ir.net/media.../annual_00.pdf

67 will reduce retirements for a couple of years. If we continue to hire 2500 per year that gets us to approx 22,000 pilots. Maybe purchase F9.

It’s an interesting goal and I’m excited to see how management peels that onion.

16600 pilots today
Add another 200 to finish out 2023
Add another 15000 (2500/yr for six years, also assumes none of those pilots hit retirement age before 2030)
Subtract 3450 retiring through 2029 (age 67 drops that number to 2050)
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​​​​​28400 pilots

Of course, no one really thinks this hiring rate will continue for another half dozen years...

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Words spoken prior to every major down turn/furlough. “This time is different!”

They’re called black swan events for a reason, every single time it’s something that’s never happened before, or a set of circumstances no one was able to predict.

Retirement age 75….