Salaries are up because profits are up and commercial pilots are one of the most unionized professional industries. As I said, there's absolutely somewhat of a push at the regional level as well as with airlines that aren't paying the going rate to get more pilots. The shortage narrative is being run by those regionals to try to reduce training requirements so they can pay folks less, to be blunt. It's a domino effect, essentially. The retiring boomers leave, creating more openings at United and Delta and American than the airlines are used to. So they're hiring faster from the regional airlines/smaller airlines, and those folks aren't well-suited to hire quickly. But new-hire classes have slowed considerably, even at the mainlines. Spirit is even looking at furloughing pilots in September. The other place there's been a "shortage" in recent history has not been in pilots but in current/trained pilots. The airlines let way too many of their pilots sit inactive for too long during COVID, and it took a really long time once air travel rebounded to get them retrained. The airlines weren't set up to send thousands of pilots through requalification at the same time. But that was an industry-created issue and went away with time (and it all but gone now). Edited to add: just curious, where has your nephew received CJOs from? ** Edited by Nova Hokie 95 at 5/10/2024, 2:04:11 PM