Originally Posted by
rickair7777
My understanding: They are still getting quality applicants but many do not have the recency that SKW would have required in the past (ie turbine-experienced pilots who have been out of aviation for a few years). Apparently they are willing to work with those folks (extra SIM and especially IOE)...you have to meet the standard but now you can take longer to do so. But they are also terminating more new-hires than in the past, so you do have to meet the standard eventually.
For now they're benefiting from the pool of folks who bailed on aviation during the bad years and are now willing to get back onboard in hopes of moving up fast. That pool will dry up eventually.
He meant line check airmen applicants. Everyone that I know that's a LCA are very knowledgeable and it suits their personalities to be a LCA. Everyone has their app in but few get chosen, company is big on pilots reliability at work for that position. They are running big classes (13 is quite a lot of LCA) , currently ORD has 25 LCA on the 175 alone with about 90 captains bidding last minute. It's now about 150 CA in ORD on 175, so will be 1 in 5 CA are a LCA. Problem we've run into is the FAA says we are only allowed x amount of LCA and we already have x but we aren't getting the full utilization of the current ones. Company is trying take away LCA for people they can't use like the stand up crews to make room in the roster