Originally Posted by blackbox348

As far as the size of the company, recruiting efforts really aren't that bad...I've chosen to look at it as a percentage. When looking at TSA it is important to note that we are a relatively small company. The new contract is good, but as always and not unlike anywhere else there is always room for improvement. Back to recruiting, lately the company is averaging around 20 new hires per month. Yeah we're not at the 80-100 Skywest is getting, but we're also 1/10 the size. 20/500 pilots versus 100/4500. Now look at this as a percentage of the pilot group, each month we're hiring roughly 4% of our group and Skywest is a little above 2% of the pilot group. Quite honestly TSA could never handle the burden of 50+ pilots/month with the current volume of instructors, sim availability, check airmen etc. looking over our master seniority list and new hires, we are losing pilots to attrition, for each 20 that we get on the bottom (new hires) we are losing 10 from the top.

Things to come...the MEC is currently negotiating PBS with management. Things to look for in this would be a higher first year pay (yes management knows they need to raise it yet again to keep recruiting, and probably don't want to scrap all the "highest first year pay" propaganda), commuter hotels, and modest raises across the board. The last contract had significant improvements on the low end for new hires, but not much for people towards the top of the seniority list. Thus PBS is the last bargaining chip for everyone else.

Overall TSA is a good place to be right now, upgrade times are low. We have one of the best contracts in the regional industry, and management knows what needs to be done to keep the hiring trends and moral up. That being said, by no means is it perfect and like EVERY other regional there are things that could definitely be improved upon.