"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Jim Fisher" wrote in message
. ..
[...]
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=3427

Which arguably states, with some authority, somewhere between 60% and
80%.

Heh. I was going to look for other rebuttal data, but your so-called
reference specifically says that current hiring is running at about 60%
*CIVILIAN* hires for the airlines. That's rebuttal enough for me.

Umm, right. Read what you wrote again, Pete: "Current hiring is running at
about 60% civilian."

If you actually read the link as you claimed, you would have seen the
following:

"I would note Jack70 that your question asked what percentage of CURRENT
pilots were trained in the armed forces. The quote from Nicholas Lacey
stated that as of 2001, 60 percent of all pilots HIRED were civilian pilots.
This does not necessarily mean that only 40% of today's employed pilots were
trained in the military. Indeed, the quote states that as late as the
mid-90s, "80 percent of major airline new hires were military trained." This
statement would suggest that the actual number of current pilots trained in
the military is substantially higher (though dwindling)."

If you would have looked at some of the actual data these comments came
from, you'd see (from:
http://books.nap.edu/books/030905676...4.html#pagetop)
"Overall, for the years represented in the table (1985 to 2001), an average
of 68 percent of new hires had military backgrounds."

I would imagine that almost no military pilots have been hired since 2001
due to the war but that's just a WAG.

Bottom line is that since about 1985, on average (and this average varies
wildly from year to year) military pilots comprise around 70 percent of new
hires for the majors. Advanced Alabama Math tells me that if, on average,
70% of all new hires are military for many years in a row, then the ranks of
pilots with military background is probably somewhere around, oh, 70%.

--
Jim Fisher