Congestion in the schoolhouse? REALLY!? If you search my posts for the past 18 months, you'll see I forcast a giant need for training, but no training occuring. Now, the schoolhouse is always a choke point, and on the MD11 (a growing fleet) we are fully choked at the house. We are running 24 hours a day here in SDF and also renting time in the LGB MD11 sim. Our new MD11 sim from CAE will initially STAY in Montreal (where it's being built right now), to train UPS crews 24/7. We can't even afford the down time of shipping and recert'ing the sim in SDF!

I've never seen utilization rates in the sim and FBS so high. Then to make matters tighter, on very short notice we opened a new MD11 domicile in December (ANC), and guess what, it's gone junior.....and as EVERY airline knows: when you open up a new "junior" domicile, you'd better be overstaffed, because you're gonna have to force folks into it during displacement and realignment bids, creating hundreds of additional training events above and beyond the norm. THEN, we announced the new 747-400 fleet would also be based in ANC, and a new fleet is a global system bid, with NO transition locks applying, so there goes another magnitude of training slots...

If anything, the size of the new hire classes will change on a moments notice, depending upon the training house chokepoint. If we slow down, it's because we physically cant train so many folks, and don't count your chickens before they hatch, you might THINK they assigned you as a MIA FO, only to find an MD11 ANC slot in your lap when your half way through basic indoc.

The latest rumor has it that there will not be a reduction in the SDF MD11 Captain slots in the April vacancy bid, because we can't afford the training slots a displacement bid would cause!