Some 8,000 pilots have now been furloughed by the major carriers, while the regionals are scrambling to hire pilots to fly their growing fleets. Under a free market, furloughed mainline pilots would fill slots at the regional carriers. It isn't quite that simple. If you look at union contracts, seniority lists, hiring requirements and even the psychology of losing a "dream job" with a major carrier, the issue becomes more complex. To help sort it out and clarify what the regional carriers are facing, C/R News talked to Kit Darby, president of Air, Inc., an Atlanta-based organization that helps pilots get jobs. Darby is currently a captain with United Airlines and a specialist in the air transport pilot job arena.

C/R News: With a number of major U.S. carriers in bankruptcy or close to it, and virtually all of them furloughing pilots, it would appear that there should only be opportunities for pilots at regional airlines. Do you agree with that assessment?

Darby: Not at all. There are opportunities in every segment, including the majors. Certainly, if you're a pilot wanting to get hired by a United, US Airways, American, or other [major], you have something to cry in your beer about. But there are a lot of opportunities at other airlines that are growing and hiring and are profitable. And it is not just the regionals and the nationals that are doing well. It looks as though there are going to be between 6,000 and 7,000 openings this year. There were about 6,000 last year. That's a lot better than no job market, and we've seen historical times where there were no jobs - zero for the year.

C/R News: How many furloughed pilots are looking for jobs?

Darby: Thereare currently some 8,300 pilots on furlough, with many having been on furlough for a year or more. And there will be additional furloughs in the future. However, this is not the biggest furlough ever. Furloughs have gone as high as 10 or 12 percent. With 8,300 pilots out of 96,000 total on furlough, that's only about 9 percent. The problem with this furlough is that it was generally unexpected. Usually you can see furloughs coming, and plan for them. However, this is not the biggest and therefore as recoverable as the others have been.

C/R News: What do we need to get a recovery going?

Darby: What we need is continuation of the age 60 retirements. We are seeing a rash of early retirements because retirement benefits are under attack, so that is helping a bit. We also need the economy to float the boat for all businesses, including the airlines, but that's a year or two away. We might get a bounce after a war or we may not. But the airlines have been through wars and recessions before. This is not the worst recession we've been through, although it is the worst for the airlines.

C/R News: So a lot of those furloughed slots will be taken care of through attrition. With 6,000 to 7,000 pilot jobs coming open, primarily at the regional carriers, won't that take care of virtually all the out-of-work pilots while filling the needs of the regionals?

Darby: Not really. The problem is that the pilots on furlough, at least so far, have in many cases not been competing for the jobs at the smaller companies. Furloughed pilots have the dilemma of making a lot of decisions. First of all, they're mad, they're sad, they're depressed, they are in rejection and denial. There are all kinds of emotions going on, so they tend not to do anything right away. Then they're faced with this issue of [giving up] seniority to take a lesser job. If you think your better job is going to come back, you consider the lesser job to be a bad long-term decision, even though it might meet short-term needs.

This overall lack of activity and wrestling with the big decisions causes a lot of them to not do anything for what turns out to be a considerable period of time. So we haven't seen a lot of the furloughed guys showing up in large numbers at other airlines. Also, some [smaller] airlines won't hire a furloughed pilot ... [because] they are afraid they'll lose the pilot if he has a resignation clause [a contractual clause that allows a pilot to resign in order to take another position, but then come back to a major carrier with full seniority].

C/R News: Are there exceptions to that?

Darby:Absolutely. The other side is that some of the smaller carriers are not requiring full resignation [from the mainline carrier], realizing that the pilot will go back [to his original airline] when the time comes, but also realizing that he will be out there long enough to be useful. They are used to keeping a pilot for only two or three, maybe four years, and if they can see the furlough lasting that long, and I think many of them will, then they can hire and use a furloughed pilot successfully.

So there are airlines that will do that. ACA [Atlantic Coast Airlines] has hired a few, ASA [Atlantic Southeast Airline] and Atlas. There are airlines that have started hiring without the requirement of [full] resignation [from the major]. And I think you'll see more of that as they realize that these are pretty good pilots and they are going to be available long enough to have a payback on initial training costs. They will get at least a reasonable return on their investment.

C/R News: So if the regionals are going to be hiring large numbers of pilots and the furloughed pilots are not rushing to fill the slots, are we going to see a pilot shortage at the regionals simultaneously with large numbers of unemployed pilots?

Darby: No, I've never really adhered to the idea of a pilot shortage. The qualification and experience level is determined by the airline. There is no lack of people in this country who want to be pilots, and no lack of pilots who want to be professionals, or professionals who want to fly for the airlines. The airline determines where the bar is placed for hiring. It has fallen as low as 500 total hours and 50 hours for multi-engine [aircraft]. Now it's back to 1,200 and 200, and will probably be at 1,500 and 500 before long.

C/R News: What about contractual agreements between a regional and its mainline partner? Are the regionals being forced to take the mainline pilots? If so, what are the ramifications of that?

Darby: When a pilot goes from the regional to the mainline carrier, it's called a "flow-through" agreement. When it's a negative, it's called a "flow-back" agreement. Not everyone has that, and it doesn't work very well. It sort of cracks the whip on the regional, which may have its own troubles because it's feeding a smaller operation for the mainline. It now has the problem of the pilots coming backward into the list, which causes additional training and certainly unrest among the troops. Flow-back is usually the big problem with flow-throughs.

When everyone is moving up, it's a wonderful thing. But when it starts going backwards, it actually doubles the effect on the smaller carriers. Some of the carriers were significantly affected. Some of the furloughs at the majors were curtailed in some cases to moderate the impact on the regionals. It was very disruptive, causing additional training and inefficiencies. When a pilot flows back, there is all kinds of gnashing of teeth and time and money to be spent. If it's just a few people, that's one thing. But if there are thousands, then you've created a sizeable problem. It was enough to cause the modifications of the furlough schedule in some cases because they had to deal with the negative impacts on the smaller carriers.

C/R News: So if the regionals aren't getting their pilots from the furlough list, where are they coming from?

Darby: For the regional carriers, pilots are coming from flight instructors, charter operators and corporate flying. In the past, those guys would be lucky to get 20 percent of the positions. Now they are getting 60 percent because the "stop-loss" had curtailed the supply of military pilots. And I expect the stop-loss to be reestablished when war breaks out again.

The military had accounted for 75 to 80 percent of the supply, but dropped to 35 to 40 percent during the big hiring boom in the mid-90s. It had slowly crept back up to about 50 percent until 9/11, when we had about a year-long stop-loss where the military pilots couldn't get out. I expect the stop-loss to be re-established when war breaks out again.

[The war] will also have an impact because it will absorb several thousand pilots in the National Guard and reserve units that are being called up. It will certainly take the military pilot who has not yet gotten hired by an airline out of play, keeping them in the military where they can't do a job search.

So the civilian pilots will enjoy a market where the military pilots will again not be available. In the long run, though, I think this [stop-loss] is going to backfire on the military. The philosophy has always been among military pilots that they have certain obligations, and when those obligations are up, they can choose when they want to get out. Now the philosophy is going to be "get out when you can." So when jobs become available and military pilots can once again get out, the military is going to pay a high price.

C/R News: How is the possible war's demand for pilots going to impact the regionals, who will be hiring pilots while simultaneously losing pilots temporarily?

Darby: All the regionals can do is hire and train pilots, trying to split the difference between what they think they will need and what they can operate with. They can ask the pilots who remain to take up the slack for a while. If they can plan all that, it works out. But if it's not managed well, they can come up with a shortage or surplus. A lot of it is outside the airline's control, so they just have to deal with it. It's a guessing game for the airline.

C/R News: With the drop in jobs at the major airlines, pilots who are now flying for the regionals, and those who get hired by the regionals, will not be "jumping ship" to fly for the majors anytime soon. How is that going to affect the industry?

Darby: For the young pilots who are moving up in the smaller carriers, and from there to the majors, the time frame has been extended - but the race is still on. The younger guys will be getting experience for a longer time with the regionals, so that when the majors come back and start hiring again, the bar is going to be higher because of the additional time being built up by those who were waiting. Qualification levels at the smaller carriers are creeping up slowly, and at the larger airlines we're starting to see the average requirements come up because there are a lot of qualified and increasingly experienced candidates available.

If the furloughed pilots start applying for those [regional] jobs, we're going to see a huge jump in qualification requirements because the mainline guy got his job with 5,000 or 6,000 hours and has been flying with the majors for a while, so the flight times would be extremely high. But that really hasn't happened yet, so we're seeing some slow qualification creep, but not a huge jump. The good news for the pilot trying to get his first airline job is that the regionals have the most jobs and the least military competition.

C/R News: Not long ago the airlines were hiring older guys in their late 40s, early 50s to fill the slots. What's the story now?

Darby: We generally had two groups. We had the hamburger without the meat. The meaty 30-year-old prime candidates were gone, so you had the younger pilots without the experience and older guys with experience who were career changers. But you had no meat in the middle of the hamburger. Now the prime candidates are available again. There are plenty of people across the full spectrum applying in most categories.

C/R News: How long can we expect the furloughs to go on?

Darby: There is no real answer. Some airlines have no backlog, others have thousands on furlough. The retirement rate is going to peak in 2007, with a lot of airlines losing 300 to 400 pilots per year because of the age 60 retirement rule. Others are retiring early because of the circumstances. So with 1,000 pilots on furlough, if you can get 300-500 pilots leaving annually, it doesn't take long to use up that backlog through normal attrition. What we need is a rising economy. But it will take at least a couple of years for most carriers. There are those who will grow right through it, some will take a few years and there are a few who will take much longer because their situation is far worse than others - United and US Airways come to mind.

C/R News: You have another job fair coming up in April in Los Angeles. What do you expect the turnout to be?

Darby: We're getting a good mix of airlines in all categories. Typically, we get more regional participation on a geographic basis. We'll have a few majors such as Alaska or Southwest, we'll have some fractionals, some national carriers such as ACA and ASA and some smaller companies such as AirNet. Typically, we'll have 15 to 20 airlines and about five or six training companies. The airlines that are coming are a wide spectrum of carriers.

(The job fair will be held at the Gateway Sheraton in Los Angeles, April 11-13. Contact Kit Darby at 800-JETJOBS, or 800-538-5627)