TransWorld

Allow me to do some quick and dirty calculations.

Now the pipeline is flowing, there are not a lot of regional FO with years and years as FO.

There are 20,000 pilots flying the regionals. Assume half are CA; 10,000. Often stated, 10% of the pilots are lifers; 2,000. That would leave 8,000 CA that are ready and want to get hired by the majors.

Some amount have just made CA, a few thousand. They honestly don’t have the hours yet to be competitive.

Some number of Mil and other pilots have their apps in with the majors.

Just a few years ago, before the pipeline started flowing, I can believe there were 10,000 apps that met the minimums. I think 17,000 apps was probably on the high side of estimates.

My conclusion is 3,000 competitive apps is a realistic number for today.

With 4,000 forecasted being hired by the majors in 2018, times certainly have changed.

SUX4U

MOP, it’s embaeasing to us as a legacy airline to have to start hiring CFI’s with piston experience only while there are still countless guys with thousands of hours of 121/military/91 in high performance jets that have proven their skills and reliability. I have nothing against the CFI’s taking advantage of this program. It just seems WAY to premature to start to allow these guys to enter our ranks.

Where is is the line drawn to earn a legacy airline pilot position? I can only say it is NOT at 1500 hours of total time in piston driven airplanes with zero real world experience while thousands of highly qualified pilots sit on the side lines. Can these guys be great pilots? Yes they sure can. Is this the appropriate time to bring them online? I personally say no where near the time to start bringing in CFI’s.

Learflyer

He or she ought to walk in like that. Metaphorically speaking that is. He or she earned that interview by flying that U-2. More so than some of these job fair superstars with no experience or PIC has. And definitely more so than some of this “girl power” feces that’s been going on too.

crflyer

It’s nothing they did wrong, it’s what we as a company are electing to do. This group of new and future hires have been given an opportunity that basically nobody else with their qualifications is being given... for no reason other than we have an agreement. Why on earth we have that agreement, I don’t know. It really bothers some people, me included.

Chuck D

I'm not really disagreeing with you, but it's not like we flip a switch and "poof!" these CFI/college kids (relatively speaking) start filling every newhire class. This process will take more than a few years to even start kicking in and we (United that is) control the flow and can tweak the quals and volume down the road also. If it produces serious problem children, that half wing has meaning that goes beyond free beer.

I don't think it takes poring over spreadsheets of the next decade of available regional pilots (from companies with their own real troubles attracting candidates), the expected numbers of available military pilots and the needs additionally of DL, AA, SWA, FDX, UPS, and, oh, Asia with their offers of $300k+/yr jobs that most of us get by email every week, to realize that what the available pool looks like now may be nothing at all like what it will be in 2028. Most of our competitors have a somewhat reliable stream of pilots via their wholly owned carriers and we're setting in place a few processes of our own. In the CFI/College case, that could have the potential to be a unique and fairly quick source of pilots once the program is up and running well which may save our bacon when and if that supply/demand curve fails. If it becomes redundant, I would think (hope) ALPA would have some influence in shutting it down or keeping it to a trickle.

Again, not specifically a cheerleader for the process but I can see where they're coming from.

trip

Bonanza pilots when you have many highly qualified mil and RJ apps on file? YGTBFKM.

oldmako

This entire discussion is stupefying. Pilots haven't hired pilots for decades. In this CFI instance, HR is not looking for pilots. They are looking for 'types' who just happen to have a commercial ticket.

757Driver

Guess I'm seeing this in a different light than some of the rest of you. Can you imagine what kind of "company men" and the anti Union sentiments these CPP's are going to have? These are guys and gals who haven't had to suffer at the hands of the regional's, have had no exposure to the labor world and are being propelled from a minimum wage job straight into a career that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Like it or not there's more than just lack of of experience at stake with this new form of hiring. Sycophants who feel they owe the company for being here and gleefully toe the company line.

Sounds like Shangri-la for Kirby and friends.

mrmak2

This could make sense if UA starts operating a large RJ fleet, essentially taking over our own feed. The new pilots have to come from somewhere

Floyd

Not everyone.