Originally Posted by
Rosey
As I understand the process, the company will fill try to vacancies with AEs before new hires. If in a given month, they anticipate a need for 10 ATL 73N B's, they post that in an AE bid; what doesn't get filled by AE gets rolled into class drops. In theory, you should get a chance to change bases on your equipment before that base for your equipment is available for a new hire.
Originally Posted by
Tummy
Are you sure about that? I put a bid in for ATL 7ER B as soon as they showed us how in indoc, and they awarded ATL 7ER B to guys on their indoc drop right after me.
Something that happened this year is the company put out several AEs early in the calendar year that resulted in
several hundred 'Unfilled Vacancies' that went into a sort of 'bank' (for lack of a better analogy). In other words, the staffing-needs lists resulted in more
openings than current line pilots could fill. The 'unfilled vacancies' show up on the award with NHP or New hire under the name column.
The AE process provides training and crew resources some flexibility in 'converting' line pilots (moving them into their new positions)(some needed training, some were just moving bases) and filling
excess training slots with new-hire pilots.
There's only one way to move domiciles after the 'class drop' process and that is by
AE.
In
Tummy's case, the 'bank' may have had several unfilled ATL 7ER B positions during/after his class drop but, at his class time, training didn't have enough slots. By the next class (1-2 weeks) there opened up a couple more slots and
that class had ATL 7ER B slots on their drop. It may not seem fair watching people in subsequent classes get the position that you desire, but that is how the AE awards/class drops work.