Flight Ops update, 13 Sept
"I know many pilots are wondering about the upcoming combined vacancy bid. While I don't have exact dates for you yet, you can expect to see more details about the combined process (instructions for making your selections in CCS, etc.) as soon as next week. We will let you know when the vacancy bid process will begin, and when to expect the award to be published. We anticipate that will be sometime in early October."
And I don't think it will be a "mania." We can only bid into vacancies and from what I've heard of the LUAL bidding process those vacancies don't come in hundreds at a time like they did at LCAL. I also think they'll proceed slowly to avoid displacements because of the multiple training cycles it can cause.
However I do think those sitting at the bottom of a CA or FO 737 seat may be in for an age-65 type stagnation as most vacancies will be filled by people senior to you. For the OTS hires, the intermixed LUAL hires are taking their more senior FO positions already in the Oct bid month, and hundreds more will be trickling in as they accept recalls for a few years. For the CAs, the junior LUAL CA is at about 6300 and the junior LCAL CA is at 9300. Those 1714 LUAL FOs in between will be considering 737 left seat vacancies and that may also take years to settle out.