jimntx said:
Well, you're going to see more of this sort of thing as the year goes by. The article made note that last year, the regional airlines across the U.S. (not just the AA wholly-owned as in this announcement) had planned to hire 5,000 new pilots. They barely managed to hire 3,000. With shortages like that, something has to give.
Airline management has typically bragged over the years about having "over 10,000 pilot applications on file." I heard this (or similar quote) from either Parker or Kirby at a Crew News about a year ago. What they don't seem to understand is that many of those applications are for pilots who have been hired elsewhere, and that every other airline in the country has the exact same applicants in their "treasure trove" of applicants. Whittle that huge number down to those who would actually come to an AA pilot class and it's probably less than 20% of that huge number that is
on file." (And that number of stale applications is increasing exponentially each day.)
Pilots have been talking about the "looming pilot shortage" since I was hired in 1979, and we have always had collective egg on our faces when it never happened in the last 40 years. The primary reason that the pilot shortage disappeared is that the airlines, kicking and screaming, were required to abandon their requirement that new-hire pilots be young. Most airlines back in the 1970s would not consider an applicant over 30 years old, give or take a few years. Court decisions and federal laws changed that, and airline hiring was opened up to vast numbers of "old" pilots (those over 30) and even allowed 20-year-active-duty military retiree pilots to get hired at the airlines.
It has taken about a generation and a half to absorb that slack, and airline management never seemed to see the inevitable reality that they now face. All of those "old" pilots hired in the last 40 years are gone. All of the last generation of under-30 pilots hired back in the heyday of airline hiring are now headed out the door. The military trains a small fraction of pilots compared to the 1970s, and civilian training is far out of the financial capabilities of most young men and women (nor do they wish to make a six-figure investment in that training to get a job that starts at $25K per year.) The recently new FAR requiring an Airline Transport pilot license with 1,500 hours of logged time made qualifying for an entry-level airline pilot job has made the task very steep to even get a hirable resume.
The chickens are home to roost. The airline management (including the new AA under the leadership of the Tempe Brain Trust) is stuck in a corner from which there is seemingly no way out.
What will happen? (Here's where I would place my bets):
The ATA will lobby for allowing pilots with foreign licenses to operate U.S.-registered airplanes. ALPA, APA, CAPA, etc. will vehemently object, but it will happen because that is what "the money" wants.
Cabotage will come to U.S. domestic flying.