The forum post raises a question circulating among prospective and current regional airline pilots: whether Endeavor Air, the Delta Connection carrier based in Minneapolis, has materially tightened its first officer training standards following recent industry accidents and incidents. While the original post lacks corroborating detail—no specific event is cited, and the claim about an increased failure rate appears to be anecdotal or secondhand—the underlying concern reflects a broader and legitimate trend across the regional airline sector in 2024-2025: heightened scrutiny of pilot training pipelines in the wake of several high-profile incidents, including the January 2025 midair collision near Reagan National involving a PSA Airlines CRJ700 and the ongoing NTSB and FAA focus on regional jet operations following that accident.
For working pilots and those considering a move to Endeavor or similar regional carriers, this kind of discussion thread matters because training pass rates directly affect career planning, financial exposure (many regional contracts still carry training bonds or clawback provisions), and time-to-upgrade projections. Endeavor, like other Delta Connection partners, has historically been viewed as a relatively strong stepping-stone operator with a clear flow-through agreement to Delta mainline, making its training reputation a significant factor in new-hire decision-making. If failure rates have genuinely increased—whether due to tightened check airman standards, revised FAA oversight following recent regional incidents, or simply a return to pre-pandemic rigor after several years of compressed hiring timelines and streamlined IOE—that shift would be consistent with an industry-wide recalibration. Following the DCA midair collision, the FAA and NTSB placed increased attention on regional carrier training programs, CRM practices, and check airman standardization, and several regional operators have quietly extended training timelines or added simulator sessions in response.
This pattern connects to a broader post-pandemic correction across regional aviation. From 2021 through 2023, low-time hiring, reduced training footprints, and aggressive expansion to meet pilot shortage demands led to concerns among training departments and unions (including ALPA) that standards had been compressed too far. As the shortage has eased somewhat and scrutiny has intensified following incidents like the DCA collision and other close calls at major hub airports, regional carriers have faced pressure from both regulators and mainline partners (Delta, American, United) to demonstrate that their training pipelines produce pilots who meet increasingly conservative standards. Endeavor's flow-through relationship with Delta gives it particular incentive to maintain a training program that mainline trusts, which could plausibly translate into a higher bar for FO checkrides.
For pilots preparing to enter Endeavor's program, the practical takeaway from threads like this is less about verifying a specific statistic and more about recognizing that regional training departments across the board are emphasizing systems knowledge depth, CRM/threat-and-error management, and checkride-standard flows more rigorously than in the immediate post-COVID hiring surge. Prospective new-hires would be well served treating ground school and simulator prep with the same seriousness as a legacy carrier transition, brushing up on flows, memory items, and profile discipline rather than assuming regional training remains the abbreviated, high-throughput process it was during peak hiring years. The discussion also underscores the value of type-specific study groups and mentorship networks (Reddit threads, PilotEdge-style prep communities, or informal Delta Connection pilot networks) as regional carriers' training departments adjust in real time to a more safety-scrutinized operating environment.