The Great Airline Hiring Panic of 2024

Hey Network. As many of you know, we lost one of the great ones recently. Jason Depew, a beloved husband, father, and aviator, touched countless lives through his passion for flying, mentorship, and service. Born in Provo, Utah, and raised in Loveland, Colorado, Jason's love for aviation began early, inspiring a remarkable career. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and decorated Air Force pilot, Jason flew combat missions in multiple aircraft and later served as an instructor and liaison, guiding the next generation of aviators. These articles were the last he published before he flew west. 

Beyond his Air Force service, Jason pursued his dreams with Delta Air Lines, authored Pilot Math Treasure Bath, and co-founded The Pilot Network, fostering a community of over 50,000 pilots. His dedication to teaching and empowering others, coupled with his joyful spirit and integrity, left an indelible mark on the aviation community.

Jason is deeply missed, but his legacy lives on in his work, his family, and all those he inspired. He was the best of us, a true one of one. Tailwinds my friend; until we form up again...

-Adam

The Great Airline Hiring Panic of 2024

By Jason Depew

I’ve noticed a lot of frustration and panic about airline hiring lately, so much, in fact, that I decided to come back to TPN just to weigh in on the situation in this multi-part series.

Bottom line? Everyone needs to remember the fundamental guidance in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: “Don’t panic!”.

(Read the book. Yes, Zooey Deschanel is captivating in the movie, but the book is, as always, better.)

If you can manage to not panic, you will be set up for career success in the near future. The industry will fix itself, and hiring will pick up again. When that happens, you want to be ready!

In the meantime, the airlines are still hiring a lot of pilots. Delta’s idea of “slowing things down” this year has them planning to hire somewhere in the range of 700-1100 pilots. That’s twice as many as retirements would have predicted, and still far more than any other hiring they’d done prior to 2014.

Let’s start by looking at the fairly recent history of the airlines to understand what’s going on, put passenger demand into context, and figure out what you can do to improve your situation.

Pre-COVID

Thanks to 9/11 and the 2008 financial meltdown, the airlines experienced more than a decade of furloughs, mergers, and bankruptcies. It sucked for pilots; however, the survivors emerged from that chaos slimmer and set up for profitability. Into the twenty-teens, those airlines used their improved positions to start making money and expanding.

In 2014, the major airlines kicked off a hiring spree that lasted, almost unabated, until the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020.

That hiring spree was entirely justified. Our country was already so addicted to air travel that passenger demand was insatiable. When the internet entered its Web 2.0 era, every schmuck with a keyboard could post their hair-brained opinions online (aheam, Emet), and the travel writing part of the blogosphere stoked demand. Then, Instagram and all the rest of the social media plague (to which I’m also addicted) made travel a perfect tool for life crafting. #buyexperiencesnotthings right? #YOLO !

Credit card companies used that opportunity to push the points, miles, and status game harder than ever, and airlines wholeheartedly supported the efforts.

In this environment, even mediocre companies made some money. The airlines started expanding like crazy. Even Frontier, a 2nd Tier ULCC had so many aircraft on order that the company was set to tripple in size!

Note that this kind of airline expansion doesn’t just happen. These are multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded companies, answerable to serious institutional shareholders and government regulators. The process of deciding to buy more aircraft involves dozens of smart and experienced people, backstopped by lawyers constantly pointing out every possible reason that they might fail and get into trouble.

This airline expansion was happening because passenger demand supported it, and ticket prices were high enough to make it highly profitable.

COVID - “Just” a Speedbump?

Then, the COVID pandemic hit and the sky fell, right? Well, it did…or it at least looked like it was going to. The disease was a serious problem without an effective treatment or vaccine. Passengers were right to be scared about traveling, and former-President Trump’s government did the right thing discouraging that travel.

The key here is that this precipitous drop in travel demand was artificial. The only thing causing it was the pandemic and the government response to it.

Most airlines offered pilots paid leaves and early retirement, some furloughed, and some went out of business altogether. They had to because they were bleeding money. Delta was thrilled when it was able to announce that it had reduced its cash burn to a mere $27 Million per day. The entire situation was a nightmare.

Then, three different companies developed vaccines. The vaccines proved effective and the pandemic ended over a matter of months.

Suddenly, the artificial factors deterring passenger air travel were gone. On top of that, the entire country had just spent more than a year cooped up in their houses and all they wanted was to get out of town and see something…anything…else. Travel demand surged!

International and business travel have taken longer to recover, but that demand continues to rise, exceeding 2019 levels for many areas.

The problem now was that the airlines had let several thousand pilots retire early. Wise companies, like Alaska, had kept their pilots current and qualified even while on leave. At least one company with less effective management had negotiated the ability to do exactly that, then changed their minds and ended up with several large operational melt-downs because they didn’t have enough people qualified to fly the flights they scheduled. But I digress….

Behind the Hiring Power Curve

With travel demand skyrocketing and aircraft deliveries continuing full force, the airlines needed as many pilots as they could get. Hiring became a frenzy. Hiring conferences that had seemed set to fizzle entirely before COVID bounced back with a vengeance. Even newer conferences, like TPNx, were able to get interview teams from every major airline. American, Allegiant, and others started giving out on-the-spot CJOs at these events. Every airline was desperate for every pilot it could get.

According to retirement numbers at AirlinePilotCentral.com, our industry has expected hiring to reach as high as 800-1000 pilots per year per airline at some companies. Instead, Delta hired roughly 2,500 pilots per year for two years, with United and American close to those numbers as well.

In that environment, getting hired was far easier than it had been. Don’t have your ATP? No problem! Have you been in a non-flying staff Air Force staff job for the last 3 years? Who cares! Did you fail two interviews at our company, supposedly the ultimate kiss of death, in the past? Let’s just forget about that!

You get a CJO! And you get a CJO! And you get a CJO!

Between all this hiring, demand spiking, aircraft deliveries, and the gaping holes left in the tops of seniority lists by early retirements, career progression was fast and furious. I saw FOs get to every base in my company in a matter of months when the more sought-after bases would have been a 1-2 year wait at best. I saw probationary FOs in the top 25% of their category picking up their 8th Green Slip for the month. Delta had Captain upgraders who had been at the company for as little as 2.5 months…on every narrowbody fleet…including the 7ER fleet that includes both the B757 and the B767-300ER that flies to Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. United had so many Captain seats go unfilled that the company begged them for street Captain provisions in their new contract.

For the last two years, our industry has been unrecognizable, in a good way. For those of us lucky enough to have major airline jobs, this career progression has been wonderful.

However, these circumstances all came with heavy costs. They were easy to ignore when hiring was on fire and new contracts promised ever more money. Now, finally, in 2024, aspiring pilots have started to suffer from the effects of this situation.

Nth Order Effects

One of the things that the propaganda-lapping anti-DEI crowd doesn’t get is that major airlines didn’t reduce their hiring standards much post-pandemic. The truth is that major airline hiring standards have always been where they are today. Most companies were able to selectively hire well above those standards because pilots were stuck on the wrong side of the supply & demand curves, but nobody is hiring below standards. (Yes, the requirement for a college degree did finally go away, but it went away equally for everyone. In my observation, this has benefitted white men far more than any other group).

As low as those hiring standards may seem right now, they still require a pilot to put in a lot of work and gain a lot of experience to get a job. It’s logistically impossible for that to happen overnight. There were only so many places for major airlines to get the thousands of pilots they hired over the last couple years. The major airlines spent that time absolutely eviscerating the regional airlines and ULCCs.

These effects have been the most powerful and long-lasting at the regionals. A pilot can join a regional airline with as little as a Restricted ATP, but FAA regulations require a pilot to have 1000 hours as a Part 121 airline pilot to upgrade to Captain. This is fine when the regionals fly a lot and FOs can spare a few years to acquire those hours.

However, with their senior Captains leaving in droves, the regionals actually started running out of people to command their aircraft. It’s gotten so bad that many of these companies were forced to reduce their flying schedules. (The most shocking recent evidence of this appeared when Republic started threatening to essentially fine pilots $100,000 if they left the company before three years. Yes, you may remember that Republic is the airline that blamed pilot staffing as the reason it went bankrupt in 2016. I continue wondering if that company’s shareholders will ever identify the common threads at Republic that don’t seem nearly as bad at other companies, and demand someone with fiduciary duty try something different.)

This is a huge problem for regional FOs. It’s already difficult enough to get hours at a regional. These aircraft frequently fly short legs…a friend once complained to me that by doing 6 x 18-minute bounces in a day, he worked for a full 12 hours, but only logged 2.5 hours of flight time. It’s even worse when a pilot is on reserve because they might sit around all day “at work,” but not go flying at all. Unlike major airlines with good contracts where the default for reserve is an 18-hour call out, many regionals have only short call reserve, or worse, airport standby.

This regional airline Captain shortage has induced a chicken vs egg problem throughout our industry. The regionals need more Captains, so they can’t fly FOs as much. However, the only way for those FOs to get enough hours to upgrade is to fly more.

This stagnation won’t improve for a while. Worse, it also means that the regionals can’t afford to onboard new-hire FOs. Some have stopped interviewing altogether. Others will interview and offer you a CJO, but then make you sit indefinitely in a hiring pool until they can upgrade enough captains to make room for you.

However, if they can hang on to enough low-time FOs long enough to upgrade, regional airline managers will probably be shocked to realize that they don’t have enough FOs, and their training pipeline will be incapable of onboarding new-hires fast enough. Then, the most junior Captains in our industry will spend the next couple years flying with the youngest, least-experienced pilots in the industry.

Nightmare, right?

A similar dynamic has played out at the ULCCs, though the effects don’t seem as bad on the surface. If a major airline hiring 2500 pilots per year will take a regional pilot, then they’ll absolutely take a ULCC pilot already operating a B737 or A320 on a regular basis. The ULCCs are also rapidly losing pilots to the majors, though the mix of pilots leaving is a more even distribution of Captains & FOs.

The mix differs in part because some ULCC contracts are actually pretty good. The senior pilots at those companies make great money, and have pretty good QOL. I assert that, in most cases, if they’d gotten on the front of the recent wave of up to 5,000 pilots per major airline they would have had more than enough time to regain some seniority and enjoy even better pay and QOL at a major. However, at this point there’s a bulge in the snake big enough to make that unrealistic for older pilots. They’re better off sticking with their good deal at their ULCC.

Also, ULCC jets just have longer range than CRJs and ERJ. As a regional FO, you’re more likely to fly 3-7 hours per day over as few as 1-2 legs at work instead of scraping for 2.5 hours over a grueling 5-6 legs like my buddy. This means ULCC FOs should become eligible for Captain upgrade 2-3 times more quickly than regional FOs.

Since ULCC pilots get hours more quickly, these airlines have an easier time upgrading new Captains. This opens up FO slots, which they can offer to frustrated regional FOs, and use to poach regional Captains.

This makes things slightly better for the ULCCs, and compounds the problem for the regionals.

It’s been fascinating to see how the major airlines’ haindling (or mishandling) of the COVID pandemic several years ago continues to have effects throughout our industry.

Not All Rainbows for ULCCs

Although I see every ULCC having plenty of demand and surprising success, this segment of our industry isn’t all rainbows and unicorns.

Two friends got hired at Spirit in the recent wave. I congratulated both and asked one when he was going to put his app in at my company so I could write him a rec. His response was essentially: “Screw that Emet, I’m never leaving Spirit! Our contract is way better than yours. This company is great.”

When I mentioned, “But…it’s Spirit…the company known for passengers brawling at the boarding gate,” he replied:

“We just ignore that. It’s why we have a bullet-proof door.”

Then, trying to sell themselves to JetBlue didn’t work (it should have been Frontier anyway) and the industry started whispering the word “bankruptcy” for Spirit.

One of my friends quickly called me up to ask about pay at QOL at my airline, fishing for that rec. The other one admitted that he’s worried and working on his apps again.

Spirit did recently admit that the ULCC model has officially failed for them. They’ve decided to completely change their business strategy and start offering expensive seats with more perks included in the (higher) ticket price.

We’ll see how that works out for them.

Actually, we’ll see how it looks for at least two low cost carriers. It turns out Southwest isn’t feeling the LUV it used to for the single-class, open-seating model that has been the hallmark of its brand. They’ve decided to sell premium seating, and assign seats.

Spirit and Southwest aren’t the only ones choosing this auspicious opportunity to try something completely outside their wheelhouse. Frontier just announced that they’re going to shift from to an almost entirely out & back model of flying. We’ll see whether this is good for passengers, or not. Frontier’s flight attendants are outraged because not getting overnight per diem on multi-day trips represents an enormous pay cut for them. They’ve filed suit, arguing that this change violates the status quo mandate in the Railway Labor Act. As an expert flightline lawyer, I think they might actually have a solid argument.

In the meantime, JetBlue has made news by “trimming” capacity and offering early retirements to pilots. Of all the ULCCs, I think JetBlue has the most potential going forward. However, it sounds like their recent expansion efforts have stalled. It sounds like their foray into trans-Atlantic flying hasn’t panned out as hoped.

Although they don’t fit squarely into the ULCC bucket, the Hawaiian/Alaska merger also promises to mix some things up for our industry. Unlike the failed JetBlue/Spirit merger, it looks like this one will receive approval. Listen to some fascinating commentary on this situation from a Hawaiian pilot on the Pilot Money podcast.

All together, this represents a lot of change at a lot of airlines. The chaos will complicate pilot hiring at those carriers, especially if one or more of them doesn’t survive. Overall, I think the survivors will emerge stronger, and I hope that means they’ll expand whichever business models prove more successful.

We’re almost ready to talk about how all this impacts you and what you can do about it. Unfortunately, we have to look at two other bad decisions that major airlines continue making first.

Flow Through Really is a Trap

The first relates to the fact that major airlines rely on their regional partners to get passengers to their hub airports, so they can fill up their big, efficient jets and make money. The most profitable airlines deeply understand this model and have robust, relatively efficient regional feeds set up. The less profitable major airlines have neglected or mismanaged their regional feed, and the effects are visible at every quarterly earnings report. (For more on this topic, please read this post I wrote about Scope.)

The regional airline pilot staffing issues we just discussed become a critical point of failure in terms of Scope. The lack of regional airline Captains directly impacts a major airline’s ability to fill up their big jets with passengers from tertiary markets and make money. The majors have realized this, and they’ve taken drastic action over the last few years.

Most regionals have drastically increased pilot pay. The American wholly-owned regionals pay their Line Check Airmen as much as $427 per hour, and that can triple with premium pay! Many regionals now offer 6-figure bonus packages. These are all examples of intelligent incentives, and they’re reportedly having some of their desired effects.

The majors have also all implemented what we call flow-through programs. Although in principle, these programs seem okay, they’re actually nightmares due to a combination of factors.

Sadly, right now, they’re nothing but traps.

Ideally, if a pilot really wanted to fly for American, the fact that this pilot could secure that future job by getting hired by any of American’s wholly-owned regionals (PSA, Piedmont, or Envoy) would be a dream come true. Years ago, I wrote about how Horizon and Alaska had done an intelligent implementation of a flow-through program. It sounded pretty good.

Unfortunately, since Seniority is Everything, all flow-through programs force new pilots to wait their turn in line until every pilot senior to them has gotten a shot at fleeting up to their major first. In an ideal world, the major airline would rapidly draw pilots from their regional partner and a pilot could be sure of flowing to their major after a maximum of 2-3 years at the regional.

Maddeningly, this hasn’t panned out. First and foremost, the majors have those staffing problems at their regionals. American can’t decimate PSA by rapidly flowing all those pilots up to the mainline, or they’d be cutting off their own foot. So, the majors meter the number of training slots for flow-through pilots to try and manage staffing at their regional.

Note: this has nothing to do with the pilots themselves, or the career progression that they want and generally deserve. This is entirely about a very large corporation protecting its regional feed…its Scope. It must take precedence over pilots’ hopes and dreams.

Unfortunately, as the pilot hiring market got hot over the last few years, each of the majors needed far more pilots than it could afford to take from their regional flow-through programs. This set up a very hypocritical situation.

The major airlines would tell their regional pilots that they needed them supporting the parent company’s brand and taking care of their passengers, but wouldn’t let them enjoy that brand’s pay or Quality of Life. In the meantime, the only places the parent company could get pilots was from pilots at ULCCs and competitor’s regional partners. Pilots stuck in multi-year flow-through pipelines rightfully felt very angry (though I wasn’t universally thrilled by their responses.)

In the past, a regional pilot could apply to their parent company directly, outside the flow-through program, if they met the requirements. The problem now was that so many of these regional pilots met that standard that the majors couldn’t afford to allow this anymore. There’s strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that the major airlines started blackballing pilots from their own regionals, and refusing to interview or hire them for at least 12 months after they tried to move anywhere outside of their flow program. If this is true, it was a short-sighted and even more hypocritical move that cost them even more good pilots.

Frustration only spread with this situation because as major airlines started stealing pilots from their competitors’ regionals, it only made staffing problems worse at every regional. It also meant that regional pilots stuck in line with flow-through programs for longer.

As pilots, there’s a bad solution to this problem. If you want to work for a particular major airline, avoid their regional partners like the plague! Go to an independent regional, or one that serves your 2nd or 3rd choice major airline. That way, you’ll be in a flow-through program as a worst-case backup, but free to apply directly to your desired major once you become competitive.

The Easy Answer

Our industry could implement a much better solution to this self-induced problem. I hold out hope that at least one major airline will have the long-term vision and courage to make the right call.

The easy answer here is for the major airlines to eliminate their regional partners. Make all of those aircraft and pilots (and flight attendants, ground crew, etc.) part of the parent airline on a single seniority list.

This way, the day a pilot is hired at Delta, they know they’re a Delta pilot for the rest of their life. Pilots will all go where they want to be in the first place, and all of this stupid cross-airline poaching will stop. The regionals are already paying major airline pay rates. In fact, my major airline contract has pay rates for E195s and CRJ900s that are less than what some of the pilots flying those aircraft at our regional partners are making!

Consider also that each regional airline has to duplicate all the most expensive parts of a corporate structure. There are C-Suite executives, a board of directors, chief pilots, etc. By simply putting all of a brand’s crews and aircraft under that brand’s existing, single corporate structure they’d be able to eliminate countless million-dollars in salaries for arguably superfluous middle managers.

This only scratches the surface on the advantages that this idea would bestow. The airline that implements this will have a powerful competitive advantage in this industry. I hope my company is the first one to take advantage of it. I’m not holding my breath.

More Bad Decisions and Broken Airplanes

The next big issue plaguing our industry right now deals with new airplanes. There’s an old aviation proverb:

Never fly the A-model of anything!

The newer a technology is, the more problems it will have. You’d think that for a 60-year old design like the Boeing 737, new technology wouldn’t be an issue. However, they made a terrible decision to try bolting some new tech onto that old aircraft, instead of going with a clean-sheet design like they should have. It didn’t work well, and they’ve tried adding even more new technology to band-aid the monstrosity through certification.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the new geared turbofan engines on the Airbus A320Neo series of aircraft (and the A220, though to a lesser extent) are having issues as well.

Let’s all agree that the B737MAX is an atrocity. It should never have existed.

Now, if you talk with pilots who fly it, they’ll tell you they like it. Compared to a B737NG, the B737MAX does seem better in some ways. However, Boeing should have designed and produced a B757 replacement. They didn’t, and this book explains why, and much of the hiring turmoil you’re suffering right now is a 3rd order result.

So, through some combination of laziness, greed, incompetence, and corruption, Boeing managed to ram the B737-8 and B737-9 MAX variants through the FAA certification process. Then, Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines each crashed a B737MAX, killing more than 300 people. The blood of those victims will forever stain the hands of players like Boeing, and the FAA…and the airlines who demanded the B737MAX instead of a better aircraft.

Now that Boeing, the FAA, and some other players are finally in the trouble that they deserve, the FAA is providing strict oversight over Boeing’s ongoing certification for its B737-7 and B737-10 MAX variants. Those efforts are taking far longer than expected.

Adding to Boeing’s woes, an incorrectly installed door plug recently blew out of an Alaska Airlines B737-9 in flight, leading to even more investigations and scrutiny at Boeing. Those investigations showed that Boeing is doing a bad job at assembly and quality assurance (QA.)

Knowing what happened to the airlines during COVID, this shouldn’t surprise us. We already noted that the major airlines collectively allowed several thousand of their most experienced pilots to retire early. Guess what happened with senior managers, QA specialists, and the most skilled assembly line workers at Boeing?

This means that Boeing has been trying to make airplanes with the least experienced staff it has had in decades. Meanwhile, demand for its B737MAX has been so high, that they’ve been trying to increase their production rate.

Trying to make more airplanes than ever, with less experience than ever…what would go wrong?

Finally in 2023 and into 2024, Boeing has had to cry uncle. They’ve slashed production rates to focus more on proper manufacturing and QA. This is good. It needed to happen years ago. We should all be glad it’s happening at all.

This is extremely frustrating for airlines though. With flying as profitable as it's ever been, and the B737MAX promising 20% better fuel efficiency, airlines are depending on B737MAX deliveries to replace old aircraft, expand their operations, and help them improve profit margins. It turns out that at some major airlines, much of the hiring done post-COVID relied on these new MAXes getting delivered over the next few years.

With -9 deliveries slowed due to QA concerns, and both the -7 and -10 stuck in certification hell, none of the airlines are getting the jets they want or need. This means the majors feel temporarily over-staffed, and can’t afford to hire as rapidly as they were.

That alone would be a problem, but it turns out the Airbus B737MAX competitor, and A320Neo series is having problems of its own.

Thankfully, since the A320 was a better, newer design in the first place, fitting new geared turbofan (GTF) engines on it wasn’t as big a challenge. Unfortunately, those engines are new technology and they’re having reliability issues in real-world operations. This has slowed deliveries of Neo-family aircraft, or worse, availability of GTF engine parts and maintenance for the jets out flying the line. (The magnificent A220 has another version of this GTF engine that suffers from similar problems.)

Although the root causes are different, the effects have been similar for airlines. The single fleet type companies like Spirit, Frontier are suffering the worst. However, all three legacy passenger carriers have Neos on order too.

All this means that no airline has gotten the aircraft deliveries it was counting on this year, and that delivery schedule will likely be backed-up for the mid-term future.

What Does This Mean For Me?

Having reviewed these frustrating circumstances, let’s take a breath.

First and foremost: I have no doubt that both Boeing and Airbus will work through all of these growing pains. The B737MAX -7, -8, -9, and -10 will all get certified and cleared for full-scale production. Each of those aircraft will enjoy successful multi-decade careers carrying our families, friends, and customers, with us at the controls.

Across the pond (and in Quebec, Hartford, and Mobile, AL,) Pratt & Whitney and Airbus will figure out their engine issues and the A320Neo series and A220 will also succeed.

All of these companies are too big to fail, and there simply aren’t any other options. It might be painful. Share prices might drop for a while. But those two companies will deliver thousands upon thousands of B737MAX and A320Neo series aircraft over the next 2-3 decades. Some of those deliveries will replace aging aircraft; however, a significant portion of those orders are part of growth plans at airlines from ULCCs to the majors.

Whether you’re a 20-hour private pilot student wondering whether it's worth continuing your training at all, a 1,500-hour CFI desperate for anything other than an instructing job, or an experienced regional or ULCC pilot wanting to get to a better company with a better contract, I get it: you’re frustrated by these slow-downs.

Do not let anyone convince you there’s no hope. I see the light at the end of the tunnel; it’s there as long as you ignore hype and sensationalism long enough to look at the big-picture and not panic.

Now, will you be able to get hired at a major airline with 2001 hours total time and 0 turbine PIC at age 25 just like your buddy (and some of my recent FOs) in the last couple years? Probably not. Like it or not, that was going to stop being realistic at some point no matter what. Eventually, the good airlines would have found the people they needed and hiring would have gotten much more competitive again.

This means you’re going to have to spend a few more years than your recently-hired peers working hard in lower-end jobs. Let’s pause for another moment of perspective though.

When I got hired at my major airline, I had 4,500 hours of mostly military flying in some noteworthy aircraft. I’d flown combat hours. I’d been an instructor, examiner, and chief pilot. I also had a lot of valuable civilian experience including glider and seaplane ratings, and lots of tailwheel time.

The regional pilots in my interview group mostly had 8,000-10,000 hours. They were all Captains or Line Check Airmen. Many had done company or union work. One had worked for the FAA.

We’d been flying professionally for at least 10 years before we were competitive, at all, for one of the most desirable airlines in the industry.

I think you won’t even have to wait that long before you’re competitive at a major; however, you’ll be a little closer to the 10-year mark than the baby pilots who recently spent 2 years or less at the regionals before getting hired at a major.

As bad as things have looked in our industry in the past, you’re still way better off than average!

How Will We Know?

The next question you’re going to ask me is: “But Emet, how long will that wait be? How will we know the wait is over?”

Sorry, but there are no guarantees. If anyone tries to give you a specific timeframe you should laugh them out of the room, ignore anything else they have to say, and for goodness sake don’t pay money for their services! Personally, I think it’ll be a year or two, at best, before things really get figured out. It could easily be longer.

You’ll be able to see things turning around by watching the news. (No, not the pontificating extremist talking heads on 24-hour news stations. Ignore that BS.) Just read industry news, on operational, manufacturing, and financial fronts.

You’ll see stories about airlines starting to hire again. Aero Crew News seems to scoop every story the moment it pops. (Well done, keep it up!) You’ll see stories about P&W’s GTF engines, Airbus maintenance and production, and B737MAX certification. When the stories stop talking about unsolved problems and start announcing increases in production and delivery, you’ll know things are about to get crazy.

Don’t focus on the when, because that’s way beyond your control. Instead, focus on making sure you’re ready when it happens because crazy is going to be an accurate description. If you thought the hiring immediately after COVID was wild, just wait until our current issues get solved. 

Anatomy of a Feeding Frenzy

If you thought the hiring immediately after COVID was wild, just wait until our current issues get solved.

Between now and then, several thousand more airline pilots will retire. Hiring won’t freeze altogether, but the airlines won’t hire enough pilots to staff aircraft for which they don’t even have a delivery date. When deliveries start happening, Boeing and Airbus will be desperate to get aircraft out the door…their own bottom lines are depending on it. After all of Boeing’s woes, and these several years of certification and production setbacks, they’ll be dying for something to make their shareholders happy.

The airlines will step up hiring, calling their waiting lists for interviews and offering CJOs. The problem will be the same one they’ve faced in other parts of the hiring wave since 2014: there’s only one pool of applicants in American aviation. Every major airline will be trying to catch pilots from that pool, and they won’t be able to get enough. Pilots will get multiple CJOs and then just not show up for class. The airlines will have to work even harder and conduct even more interviews just to get enough pilots to fill seats in their indoc classes.

(Quick sidenote: God forbid you be the company that goes into this frenzy with an old contract, a terrible contract, or even just highly contentious negotiations. You’ll be a pariah, and you’ll miss out on all the best candidates. If you’re due for a new contract, get it done now and make it a good one!)

Unfortunately, this pool will be a little deeper than it has been. It’ll include a large group of experienced regional and ULCC pilots who were ready to move up before things slowed down in 2024 and have been stuck ever since. Plus, in the next couple years a whole new generation of pilots from those sources will rise to meet the majors’ minimum requirements.

This hiring slowdown may scare some military pilots into taking a retention bonus and sticking around. That’s a bad choice. They should go to the Guard or Reserve instead, but I have a very difficult time leading some of those horses to water. Anyway, once the hiring floodgates open, even the densest military pilots will realize they need to make their move or miss out…yet again.

Finally, there’s also a rising generation of pilots who didn’t truly realize how great the airlines can be for pay and QOL until around the end of COVID. They all jumped into aviation colleges, airline-sponsored ab-initio programs, and other GA flight schools shortly after COVID, and have been building hours as fast as they can. The members of this generation who grind hard will be on the edge of competitive when the next hiring boom kicks in. Then, as that boom again eviscerates the regional and ULCC airlines, this generation will gladly replace those pilots and rapidly become even more competitive.

You’ll probably be able to get hired somewhere, but the most prepared pilots will have a better shot of getting hired sooner, and at their airline of choice.

How to Prepare

Hiring won’t stop altogether over the next couple years. The majors are still hiring more pilots than they have retirements during this “slow-down.” However, unless you’re highly competitive right now, you just found out that you probably have a year or two to start getting ready for the next hiring boom. That’s less time than you think, but it’s certainly enough notice that you don’t need to panic. If you’re smart, you’ll start right now doing everything you can to make yourself more competitive.

I’ve written about this a lot. Here’s one post that I think still holds weight after more than 5 years. Worded another way, you need to use the next couple years making your own stars align.

Although a lot of what you can do is covered there, let’s hit some key points.

1. Fly, a lot!
   
   One of the easiest differentiators between pilots is your flight hours, especially anything special or noteworthy. You need to pursue every opportunity for more flying, as long as it’s at a safe operation.
   
   If you can get it, you want multi engine turbojet PIC time. If not, then just multi, or just turbine, or just turboprop are better than piston single if you can’t get a jet job.
   
   Getting paid to fly is generally more valuable than paying to smash bugs in your own aircraft. You need to be flying (for pay) a minimum of 100 hours per year. 300+ per year is better.
   
   
2. Professional Development
   
   Fundamental professional development is different for pilots than it is for engineers, doctors, or MBA. For us, professional development means you need to pursue opportunities to show leadership. Work hard to earn spots as a Chief Pilot, Line Check Airman, or even Simulator Instructor. If you can lead a special project at your company, go for it.
   
   You can also take non-flying jobs at your company or union. Don’t let these get in the way of your flying, but if you can do both they look great on a resume. You’ll find opportunities to serve as a generic cubicle-dwelling schmuck, but you can potentially work in important, valuable areas like safety, scheduling, network planning, technical operations, etc. If your company has a program for hiring, mentoring, or recruiting, those also look great. Do them as long as you don’t have to give up flying.
   
   One other part of this is pilot ratings. Yes, you can and probably will get hired with nothing more than Private ASEL and ATP AMEL. Put yourself in the shoes of the person scoring your app though. That’s boring! Add some other kinds of ratings. If you don’t have all of your CFI ratings, you’re already wrong. Consider adding glider, seaplane (SES and/or MES), or a non-airline type rating. Anything unique that helps you stand out is good.
   
   
3. Attractive Cheap(ish) Flying
   
   There are a few types of flying that might help you accrue hours for less money out of pocket that will also look really good on your application. One of those opportunities is Civil Air Patrol. If you show up to a CAP unit with some patience, humility, a friendly attitude, and an active CFI in hand, you can absolutely find yourself busy with fun and interesting flying, to include conducting an unlimited supply of annual checkrides for pilots in your wing. I’ve helped fight forest fires within ½ mile of the faces on Mt. Rushmore, tracked foxes across the Badlands, and provided realtime ISR of a forest fire threatening my Air Force Base for my Wing Commander because the B-1s under his command were incapable of performing that mission…all with CAP.
   
   Another fun type of flying that I’m just getting into is the Commemorative Air Force. You’re best off showing up to one of these units with a lot of lots of tailwheel experience, including at least 30 hours and 80 landings in the last year. If you do this, you can quickly find yourself giving rides in some of the most amazing warbirds in airworthy existence. If you’re giving rides or working an airshow, you’re not paying for those hours.
   
   As you get into some of the larger aircraft, you might even get a very splashy type rating or LOA (type rating equivalent for rare aircraft like the P-51 or B-29) on your ATP certificate. I promise that if you apply to an airline with one of those on there, every eyebrow in that hiring department will perk up.
   
   The basic way to get involved in these organizations is to find the nearest unit, go online and pay the membership fee, then start showing up to meetings. Go get started.
   
   
4. Apps, Logbooks, Interview Prep
   
   I like lots of the people in the app/logbook/interview prep industry, but I despise that industry itself. I believe pilots should have the professionalism and attention to detail to take care of their own applications and logbooks throughout their careers. I believe the airlines should be more (or even at all) transparent about their hiring processes so that there isn’t so much disinformation and fear among pilots. Sadly, nobody cares what I wish or believe.
   
   Like it or not, you need to get someone to look at your applications, resume, and logbooks. You probably even need to pay for those services. Don’t cheap out. You probably need to pay for some professional interview prep too. We pilots all wish we could be better at interviewing, but we just aren’t.
   
   Now, above all:
   
   DO NOT WAIT TO GET THESE THINGS DONE!
   
   Every time we have a hiring wave, the companies in this industry get a deluge of requests for help. Don’t be the tool who waited until the last minute, then calls in a panic because a hiring window just opened and your app looks like garbage, or you got called for an interview and haven’t started your prep. Things will be so busy that you may not have enough time to get the professional help you want at any price, and it’ll be your own damn fault!
   
   So, you’re officially on notice. You have a couple years, give or take, to get your shit together. Start setting aside at least 30 minutes every night to work on your resume, logbooks, and applications. As soon as you think they’re ready, get a pro to look at them. Once they have, you should be able to keep things updated yourself as time goes on. (Or, smart service providers who agree with my assessment of our industry’s timelines might offer a primary service now with a quick top-off anytime up to 24 months from now, for a sweet, sweet upcharge.)
   
   You also need to start doing professional interview prep now. Yes, now. All of the good interview prep companies offer top-off sessions right before a scheduled interview. Go through their full program now, pick your best stories, and spend the next year or more practicing them until your delivery is worthy of a courtroom scene on Suits.
   
   One of the benefits of this process is identifying your very best TMAAT stories that can fit as answers to a variety of questions. I’ve noticed too many pilots over recent years getting to interviews so early in their career that they just hadn’t experienced much. They raced through training, flew milk runs for a regional, upgraded the moment they could, and had continued flying milk runs without encountering much trouble or story-worthy challenge. Trust me: that kind of career makes for a terrible interview, and I think it’s a big part of what led to the worse than 50% overall success rate with Endeavor’s DGI program before COVID.
   
   If you dive into interview prep now, you’ll still have time to realize that your career has been too vanilla. Then, you can go out and pursue some kind of other flying/life experience that will give you something unique and compelling to bring up for your TMAAT questions.
   
   “Well, I’ve gotten lucky and had pretty fantastic customers so far at my current airline, so I haven’t really had any customer service problems, per se. However, there was this one time I was helping the US Forest Service fight fires threatening Mt. Rushmore and they had this problem where….”
   
   How’s that for an interview question response? If you’re in the vanilla smooth sailing bucket, and starting interview prep now helps you generate some better stories, I promise you’ll thank me.
   
   
5. Volunteering
   
   Airline hiring runs on a very whole-person concept. They want to see some variety in your life, and some sign that you can be dedicated to something other than your own career progression. Go volunteer somewhere.
   
   This can really, truly be anywhere. However, you’d better believe that an interviewer can tell immediately if your volunteering was a surface-level box check. Start establishing a pattern of dedicated service to something other than yourself. Lead those projects, mentor others, and take part in projects big enough that you feel proud of them.
   
   This could be teaching Sunday school at church, building houses with Habitat for Humanity, working with kids at CAP (a great way to help get picked for more free flying), or an almost endless list of other ideas. Don’t spend all your time watching TV and doom scrolling social media. Go make the world better.
   
   A couple years is a lot of time to volunteer enough to convince your future employer that you really do care.
   
   
6. College
   
   In the recent hiring wave, even stalwarts like FedEx and Delta abandoned their requirement for pilots to have a 4-year degree. I don’t love this change, but these companies needed bodies bad enough that they didn’t really have any other choice. Don’t plan on these standards staying this low forever.
   
   First, these airlines changed their policies overnight to not require a degree. They could change back just as quickly.
   
   Second, every pilot needs a broader education than you can get from your pilot rating ground schools counting for college credit. Your life will be better if you have a basic understanding of biology, chemistry, physics, trigonometry, calculus, political science, writing, speaking, reading, etc. Look at some of the stupid conspiracy theories or pseudo-theological BS that people fall for in our world right now. We do not want to keep moving in that direction!
   
   Third, every pilot needs a fall-back. If you ever find yourself needing a non-flying job, you will wish, desperately, that you had a degree.
   
   Fourth, just because degrees aren’t mandatory, doesn’t mean that airlines don’t look at them. Your application will score better if you have a degree. It’ll score even better if it’s in something more meaningful than Underwater Basket Weaving or “Duh, Me a Pilot.” If hiring gets as competitive as I think it might, you’ll be kicking yourself if your buddy with an engineering degree gets her CJO before you. And no, that won’t be some “DEI bullshit.” That’ll be her app scoring better than yours because it has more valuable stuff on it.

I earned a Master’s while spending half of my life deployed in Afghanistan fighting a war. I promise that you can make meaningful progress toward a degree amidst some flight instructing, charter flying, or even as a regional/ULCC pilot. I just gave you a couple years’ notice. No, go enroll and get to work!

Wrap-up

I’m sorry I can’t tell you that hiring will pick up next month, or next year, or at any specific date. Our industry faces some real problems that won’t be solved easily or quickly. However, I believe there’s so much riding on that resolution that it will happen. The companies involved are just too big to fail.

Thankfully for you, the timeline for getting through those issues probably won’t be that long. I think hiring could get pretty hot again in as little as a couple years.

If you’re already frustrated and waiting, this timeline feels unsatisfactory. However, if you haven’t taken serious action to start preparing yourself, you should actually feel a little behind the power curve. Don’t coast. Don’t wallow. Fly hard, and consider doing some or all of the other things I discussed to prepare yourself. It’s worth the effort!

Imagine how great it will feel when the next hiring boom comes, and you’re ready. If you meet that boom with the apps, resume, logbooks, and interview skills ready to showcase your hard work and valuable experience, you will have a fantastic chance of landing your dream job at a great company. Use this time to your advantage!

I wish you all the best in your preparations. I look forward to hearing your stories in a couple years and making sure that, like all my FOs, you don’t pay for drinks on layovers.