Originally Posted by
Aero1900
I'm going to be very curious to see how many Denver captains actually leave for Orlando. I keep hearing guys say "lots of the senior guys are going to leave", but I really don't see more than just a few going.
My prediction is Chicago becomes the junior base, Orlando mid seniority and Denver becomes the senior base (duh). I think a fair number of Chicago guys will leave for Orlando, and the company will have to backfill Chicago crews. The Chicago captain bid will go quite junior.
Perhaps the million dollar question will be if the company displaces crews out of Denver and shrinks the base???
I did some preliminary math (please forgive any of my pilot math mistakes
) -
There are currently 748 active pilots, based on the total number of active bidders in both domiciles for the June bid period. This is out of a total of 862 pilots on the June 1st seniority list - for the sake of realistic representation of pilots actually bidding, we can probably exclude the May class and call the number of bidding pilots in June 842. That means that ~88.8% of pilots of the seniority list are "active" (748/842).
If the company hires at a rate of 20/month for the rest of the year, there will be 1000 pilots on property and 888 pilots bidding by December 31st (based on ~88.8% of pilots on the list being active). Also, if 200 pilots (100 crews) will be based in each ORD and MCO, that leaves approximately 488 positions remaining in DEN (888 active pilots minus 400 pilots for the other domiciles) - a reduction of 123 pilots (and 61 crews) from the June bid period.
I could see a few senior DEN FOs upgrading to CA in Chicago (as has been happening in the last few VSAs) as ORD people whole live in FL, or who prefer a commute to MCO, leave to the new base. That goes for DEN people as well. That could potentially have a stabilizing effect on existing DEN staffing and keep a large number of pilots there in their current statuses. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I'm an optimist like Sulk
I could also see a LAS base in the next 6-18 months, as we have some many redeyes departing from the there every night being fed by ORD and DEN crews having to make a 2-5 hr westbound flight flight before making the eastbound redeye. It would just make more sense (and would probably be cheaper) to have crews based there to start their pairings from LAS.