Originally Posted by
Sink r8
I agree fully. None of the triggers failed. Sailing can say what he wants about mil leave and early-outs, nothing in the macro environment prevented hiring, and the company is smart enough to input mil leave and early outs into the equation. If not, they should be smart enough that they don't know enough about mil leave and early outs, and therefore can't predict hiring. SD knew what he was doing. It's not an egregious act, or evil, just... business.
As for the explanation that the Board doesn't want hiring... that makes perfect sense. It also makes perfect sense for SD not to take the Board for granted when he made the statement.
We all know what happened; let's put on our big-boys pants and recognize an non-binding sales argument when we see one.
So far the only thing that's happened is the company has done everything with the fleet plan they said they would. It now appears they plan to do even more then their sales job. This forum is focused on hiring when the fleet plan is more important. Lots of reasons they did not hire a small number of pilots this winter. Mil leaves, ER participation, moving up the nines retirement and the fact we are running a really good airline which reduces reserve needs and credit pay.
They will still need the same number of pilots in 3 years. They will just have to compress the hiring. Flight ops did not want to do that but lost that battle.