Originally Posted by
slowplay
Not to be a downer, but I doubt they'll hire this year.
Back in April or May management announced a planned 4% capacity pulldown for the 3rd/4th quarter compared to last year. That's more than enough to absorb the 164 guys that are retiring during the rest of the year. My bet is that they won't hire until fall 2012 unless next summer's block hours are planned way up. If the economy doesn't puke and there aren't any legislative/ownership/cabotage surprises, they'll need to hire every year after that as age 65 kicks in.
I don't know. We've got four things that might influence hiring sooner than later.
1. LGA slot swap
2. Aircraft orders (though this will be down the line)
3. New FAA crew rest guidelines
4. Age 65 guys
The early outs could be absorbed by the capacity pull down but at some point we're going to need to get ahead-of-the-ball for some of these other reasons. If Delta waits until the 65ers are forced out training would be full for quite sometime just with new hires. Seems like they'd have to start hiring early and have the guys on the payroll so when the big numbers start falling we're not starting from scratch.
Am I missing something?
ranger