Originally Posted by
Razorback flyer
CVG is a unique animal. There are currently about 250 pilots here, with roughly 60 pilots in each seat (M88, 737, ca/fo) The captain’s seat and the top 2/3rds of the FO’s seats go very senior for the type aircraft, but the bottom 3rd of the M88 and a few of the 737 seats are pretty junior. In fact, the junior pilot awarded the m88 CVG appears to be a sept ’14 hire. They are generally replacing M88 FO’s as they leave, and guys do seem to be moving out for upgrades, bigger equipment, better seniority, etc. A handful of junior FO’s seem to make this an intermediate stop, on their way out to MSP, or biding time on a seat lock to get to the 73 in DTW.
They have stated that they don’t want to backfill up to 10 73 CA and FO spots going forward. However they continue to backfill on the 73 FO side only as necessary to keep the categories from getting too far out of balance. When 73 captains leave (which is rare,) they are generally not replaced, nor are the corresponding number of FO spots.
Nobody on the left seat has a strong desire to leave – they’re not here because they want to drive big metal, they’re here because they want to drive to work. We don’t have a lot of retirements coming up for CA’s. In fact I only know of one voluntary and one Mandatory retirement in the next year, with no more mandatories scheduled until 2017. That could be a good thing for the base, though – as they have publicly stated they don’t have the sim capacity to deal with the number of training events base closure would cause. Most likely, though, they will let us shrink naturally through attrition until such time as our numbers (or a slowdown in the economy) make us a more manageable closure.
Also, I would advise against bidding into CVG if you plan to commute by air. The hub is very small, with only 1 or 2 flights to many of the remaining destinations. In addition, we do not operate the hub on Saturdays, and some long stretches around holidays (read: we only operate flights to ATL, MSP, NYC, DTW, FL, LAX, SEA, SLC, and sometimes BOS or ORD. It’s not unusual to see a 4 day stretch with no hub around Christmas, and we did not operate the hub from the Saturday before to the Saturday after Labor day.) While there are very few that commute to the base, many commute from (though the vast majority go to DTW, some ATL as well.)
If you live in or near CVG, it’s a great base. You’ll get to know they guys we fly with, there are some unique perks to being based here, we’ve got a good CPO team, and it’s easy to communicate with both them and the alpa folks.