My thought: It is needed right now. Until we can get enough senior FO's to upgrade, it is either fast upgrades or stop the incoming airplanes. Nobody wants to stop the airplanes coming in, but I can see a delay occurring soon. Most of these guys upgrading quickly are really quality guys with thousands of hours and 7+ years in the 121 game. If they were less experienced, I would be frightened.

Real model?: Nope. Not really. We really need to get FO's on the line faster and get they flying so that they can get experience. There are people that were hired 6 months ago that haven't even flown the jet yet. That is crazy. They should have at least 200 hours in the jet by now. We also need to hire a couple classes of street captains or delay some of the 700's for a little bit to get caught up. Also, we need to entice the FO's that are on property and bypassing to make the move up. Some guys are waiting until they can hold a decent line. If reserve rules were better, and schedules were better, people would want to upgrade faster.