Originally Posted by
dragon
Sailing,
Agree this had so many outs for management. I took it as a plea for the junior folks to vote for the TA. I think the ultimate reason we will initially hire is not for the block hour plan but rather, the need to lead turn the hiring required for the eventual retirements.
Many have said we simply don't have the training capacity we once had and will be maxed out at 600 per year. What I see happening though is this: The board, in order to not carry extra pilots, will not hire until it's too late and then Flight Ops will be forced to tell the network guys that their glorious plan for world domination is just so much pie in the sky. If they don't think outside the spreadsheet they won't be able to quickly react, and that is the ultimate decision here. To their credit however, our management has repeatedly shown out of the box thinking and the desire to run an airline!
They can sustain almost 1000 a year. When we had much less sim capacity they were doing 100 a month for several months. If they lack sims then they simply contract out for them. They will not front load the retirements much. There is however another factor. Once we enter a sustained hiring mode it keeps a bunch of pilots off the line. Generally its a 5 to 7 percent factor. That means that once sustained hiring starts they have to staff the airline for the pilots in school. Thats 500 to 700 jobs. Its also why furloughs almost always follow after a hiring cycle. Your instantly surplus 5 to 7 percent of your pilots even if you keep the exact same block hours.
Unless there is a huge drop on overall system block hours we will hire by next fall. They have to in order to staff the block hours moving from DCI to the mainline. The retirements start up shortly after. If we don't hire late this fall I would expect classes starting next August and continuing on a sustained pace for many years.
That is of course if the economy gets better, Delta executes its business plan ect......
