I really wish some smart airline-savvy statistician would examine the FAA records on pilots, the level of their licensing, the number of "new starts," the number of ATP written exams completed, the number of ATPs reaching age 65 in the next decade, the number of new ATP pilots each year for the past decade, etc. as well as projected passenger demand, current aircraft orders, etc. and number of US military pilots trained each year and their retention levels....and then that statistician might come up with a projection that (I feel in my gut) simply demolishes any pie-in-the-sky idea that DA, UA and AA will be able to sustain any kind of significant regional presence. Simply put, who exactly is going to staff these RJs, and who exactly is going to endure slave-wages as the mainline opportunities explode in number?
Getting qualified to be an airline pilot has always been an expensive proposition when done privately, and getting a military pilot training slot is now akin to winning the PowerBall (and the military now pays enough to retain their pilots.) And each passing day, both of these propositions get even more difficult and/or expensive. And now it is near impossible for even the relatively well-financed "Joe" to get the minimum hours to even fly co-pilot on an EMB 145. And the impending rest rules will further tighten the demand for raw numbers of ATPs.
I see an implosion on the horizon. Am I missing something? If pilots would actually get their act together and act like real union workers (i.e. the blue collar workers they truly are), they would find themselves with incredible leverage over the next decade.
Now, where is that smart statistician with the graphs and pie charts?
(Please don't start posting links to sites that really don't deal with the entire picture. There are a lot of "pieces of the puzzle" out there for anyone to see. But no one has solved the jigsaw yet, except maybe the airlines themselves who are desperate to keep the reality under wraps.)
