Originally Posted by
captfurlough
Hard to say...but 12 to 15 years seems like a normal upgrade for legacy carriers, and I think that's as good a guess as any...it'll be every bit of that. The bigger question is what will the company look like 10 or 15 years from now?
I don't think they're all as bad as that. We have an unusually young group here, due to the fact that we hired very young and inexperienced pilots back in the 90's.. the same time other's were requiring 1000+ hours of 121 PIC to apply ... when I started class at AA in 2001, the average age was 35, and I was the 2nd youngest at 28.. contrast that with the guy we were hiring back then who were fresh off the south ramp and barely able to hold an ATP..
Add to this the fact that we grew substantially from 2008 thru 2012 and added a lot of younger pilots... The closest thing to us might be DAL or Continental who added a few pilots, but others like AA haven't hired in over a decade and many of their FO's are in their late 40's and early 50's..
No, we're not your daddy's legacy airline... we've got some YOUNG people here..
Upgrade at DAL at some bases is as low as 8 years based on the last info I got from a friend, and some others like USAir are well below 5..
Combined AA/USAir might be more complex but with us only have the one base, we're not quite likely to offer "junior bases" and "Senior bases" like the others.