Originally Posted by
Zoomie
Because we are shrinking through attrition.
For every 3 pilots that retire, we are only replacing maybe 2 of those right now.
Look on the vacancy bids, we might be hiring like crazy, but that's just because retirements are happening like crazy.
Those "synergies" that were touted hard during the merger are starting to show themselves.
After SLI, it doesn't matter which side you were on, there will be stagnation just due to merger "synergies" alone.
Hopefully, the movement will make most of that stagnation less noticeable, but both sides would be moving at an even quicker race if it weren't for the synergies.
The airline can be staffed right now with about 9600 pilots per the "Min" number on the latest vacancy bid. It shows we have about 10200 (active) on property (more on the list obviously, but many are on Militar LOA or medical leave, but unless we start getting more 787s before we retire those 757s and 767s, I don't see any growth coming. All airline growth is basically going to be conceded to ME carriers according to the latest Boeing orders.
You have a misunderstanding of how the Min works. The purpose of the the Min is to add clarity to when secondary awards will be awarded. It is not the minimum system wide staffing.
The reason you see many more FO vacancies to CA vacancies is for two reasons. First CA bids create many more secondary bids. Just look at the results of 14-03v. It had plenty of secondaries for CAs. That bid had roughly 70 awards. Granted most are people moving around but that was to be expected for the first year after the SLI was done. The second reason you see many FO bid is that they can canncel the unfilled ones if wanted. Just look at EWR guppy it has 50 slots yet the total is less that the 525 that was to be in 14-03v.