supply and demand at work? too many early-career pilots, driving pay down.

I apologize, I could have indeed said that differently. These days people take statements online read things into them like crook! bigot! racist! that simply aren't there. My point was simply that leading off a press release in the way they did was a clear PR effort of some sort. It could have been plainly stated that UA wants to create program to recruit and grow the best regardless. In other words, opportunities for all. I'm wondering if UA feels they have a diversity problem on the flight deck?

It's working to some degree--starting pay has essentially doubled in the last few years. But, as is truly the American way, instead of paying more airlines are now lobbying the government to reduce the qualifications required for new pilots.

Did you even read the article you linked? Hint... it doesn't talk about "reduced qualifications" but rather more effective ways of training pilots. Why is that a bad thing?

It's not just LH, or Arizona, either. Many foreign students come to the US to learn to fly. Arizona, Florida, and California are the more popular states due to their weather.

Supply and demand has been dramatically increasing the pay of entry-level airline pilots over the last five years. In that time, the base pay has roughly doubled, upgrade time dropped by about one-third, and various signing and retention bonuses added. Many regional airlines have also started subsidising pilot's commute by paying for some hotel rooms in domicole for those who commute.

I've been in this industry since 1990. I've never seen anything like the current hiring environment.

Yes it does. They want "more effective training" in lieu of the 1500 hour rule:

"The RAA and other stakeholders have called for alternatives to the 1,500-hour rule and have said that targeted training, including more work in flight simulators, can be more effective than merely requiring lots of flight hours."

I don't necessarily disagree with the premise of the argument that the airlines are making (especially because the quality of flying that pilots get in those first 1,500 hours is often pretty bad), but it is very clearly an attempt for them to increase the pilot pool without significantly increasing their own costs.

Whose costs? One way or another, the trainee is paying for the training whether directly or indirectly. Making it more cost effective seems like a good thing.

Bulk hour building, especially as a single or multi CFI is not really the best way to prepare someone for airline life - the Gulfstream program was actually quite good, with right seat time in a rather placid flying environment, lots of cockpit resource management exposure and training (which is really really important) and simulator time for dealing with emergencies. I would agree that more simulator time dealing with more emergency or unexpected situations across a wide variety of urgencies, and root causes, along with a lot of take off and landings in varying conditions is much more effective than sitting in one place for hours. Flying the plane is honestly not that hard - dealing with adverse situations is why we need capable people, as proven by the Colgan disaster.

Airlines need to increase the supply of pilots. There are many levers for doing that. One of them is increasing pay to make it worth it for people to pursue flying as a career instead of, say, going into the tech industry. Increasing pilot pay is very expensive to the airlines. While they've been forced by market conditions to do it to some degree, they're also simultaneously trying to lower the training barriers to make it easier to get into flying, which is much cheaper for the airlines than increasing pay. It's unclear what the impact on safety of doing so would be--if it's done right it should be at worst neutral (but probably an improvement), but given that the FAA hasn't yet approved those programs, it appears that they haven't yet made the case to the FAA.

There's room for both, but there's still a serious imbalance in the supply/demand curve and airlines are only increasing pay as a last resort after loudly complaining about a pilot shortage and lobbying for training reform. I'm not saying that any of these steps are really bad ... it's just a bit tiring because the pilot shortage is mostly a manufactured crisis because airlines are slow to adapt to a world where, among other things, they can't rely on taxpayers to subsidize pilot training through a steady stream of military veterans.

Does/did UA have a flow through program with their regional carriers?

Well, they already have it. They want more. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/61.160]14 CFR 61.160[/url].

The 1500 hour total is reduced to 750 hours for military pilot and 1,000 or 1,250 with an associates or bachelor degree from an authorized university with an aviation program.

Not a flow-through but a career path program which gives qualifying pilots interviews at United in order of their seniority at specified United Express carriers. Those CPPs were replaced with the relatively new Aviate program.

When I was a teenager people told me to stay the hell away from being a pilot (unless you were going into the air force or naval aviation) because the pilots at feeder airlines were making $16000 a year or so because of market oversaturation. Apparently there is now an acute shortage of pilots?

There is a shortage of some kinds of pilots, the experienced ones. It's not acute, but it is getting worse. That's why the FAA raised the retirement age not so long ago.

There's, however, no shortage of low-hour first officers. Although civilian interest in aviation careers is declining and there are fewer retiring pilots from the military than years past, there are still sufficient candidates to begin flying with an airline.

Hard to believe this was earlier this year! :eek:

​​​​​Anyone know what happened to this academy since February?


Added:
It appears the academy that United was buying is: "Westwind School of Aeronautics in Phoenix" which it planned to rename "United Aviate Academy" in September.
I reckon this purchase agreement might have never closed and the deal fell through?

i live in an area that most would never understand...very pro military and near the usaf academy......had a great chat with 4...yes 4 AF pilots turned 1 delta 2 united and a southwest guy at our kids baseball game today...what united announced was nothing more than crazy, we all knew scott was a betting man, ...he is even a former airman...but this was nuts....to take aviate and make it 50% women and p.o.c.? all 4 of then brought up the atlas crash in houston as the example, and all of them said that they did not care if the person flying was any color but could fly an airplane.. too many military people are going to be overlooked at united just so scott can say that 50% are other than the white guy,.... that how i see it from the palmer divide