Originally Posted by
sulkair
Follow me here guys.
As a way of finding a "historical norm" I sampled two seniority lists, one from 2011 and one from early 2014.
On both lists, the junior CA spot reached ~54% of the way down the list.
2011... 360/673 = .534
2014... 380/711 = .534
• All things being equal, to me, this means once things settle down, and the bases are well established the Jr. CA will be at 54% down the list.
• So by the end of this year when our pilot group is ~1000, the Jr Ca would be #540
• At the end of this year, the senior September 2013 new-hire, factoring in 2/mo attrition, will be #587, thereby 47 numbers short of CA.
• HOWEVER - because things are so 'up-in-the-air' right now, there will be a number of Senior Denver FO's that will not upgrade right away, thereby altering that 54% standard.
In otherwords it only takes 47 Denver FOs, who in a perfect world would have upgraded, to decide to wait, and presto that 9-2013 newhire is in Upgrade class by end of this year. ( 27 months from hiring on. )
And worse case, if no Denver FOs wait... Just stick with the 54% standard: (9/2013 hire #587) / .54 = 1087. And our pilot group should be 1087 by mid 2016. So worse case it's a 33 month upgrade for the 9/2013 newhire.
That all sounds very reasonable except that the vast majority of our pilot group is committed to living in the Denver area, and as Chicago grows bigger, there will be more and more FOs bypassing upgrade so they don't have to move or commute. Your historical look back is great, but an east coast base and a much larger Chicago base really throws off the balance. Captain upgrades will go more junior than your math suggests