Originally Posted by CALFO

You need to look at the big picture. We have 13 787 deliveries in less than twelve month. The next 8 are initially (temporarily) going to IAH. On paper, IAH has a lot of 787 pilots. In reality, many are 737 Captains that need to be trained. I doubt the company can train them, plus additional displacements, in time to cover the new IAH flying. Reason being, the system can't afford to lose that many 737 captains overnight. New capt's in other bases must be trained first. So, there will be a lag in training the Iah 787 fo's. The slack will be picked up by SFO and lax. Notice that they are only asking for 5 new 787 IAh Capts on this bid. IAH can't cover the flying.

Why not just open more vacancies in IAh? Because, long term, they don't plan to run that many 787 routes out of Iah. What you will see is the staffing adjust to the amount of displaced 737 Captains in IAH. Figure another 40 go to 787 FO. Now you have enough crews in Iah to cover an additional 3 routes over what is there today. So, dh SFO crews to IAH and/or create W trips and have them cover the temporary staffing issue. Sometime next year they will open up additional flying in SFO and reduce some of the flying in IAH. When their happens they will not have surplus crews in IAH and SFO will have the staffing to handle the additional flying.