Originally Posted by
MrStl
I have been watching a friend's progress. He started at Skywest in late Oct. He now has about 240 guys below him. There are 1350 between him and the most junior captain.
Looking at the 200 pilots more senior than the junior capt it looks like 15% are still FOs. This number will probably increase as most of the 1350 do not have much time and will wait.
Skywest has 40 planes coming soon, that is at least 200 captain slots with 5 crews per plane.
In 2 months he has moved up 100 numbers.
1350 minus the 200 new captain slots leaves 1150. Take away 15% leaves about 985 pilots. Divide that by the 50 they are losing each month is 19 months. I expect the number leaving to move to 60 a month and I expect the 15% passover rate to climb to 25%. That would make it about 14 months.
This guy has lots of time and experience and lives in the junior base so he will upgrade as soon as he is able. Most would put the number between the 14 and 19 months but Skywest is being aggressive and I know that United, Delta, and Alaska are trying to get them to do lots more flying. Therefore, I expect him to be able to upgrade in less than 14 months.
Gojet is talking 12 to 18 months but United is not going to renew their contracts for flying the CRJ-700s. (United does not want the 700s as you can see they just cancelled the contract for some Skywest 700s for 2016) I am not sure when those are up but I believe one contract for 15 planes is up in 2017 and the other in 2018 or 2020. Can someone add in the correct dates?
While I expect the upgrade to continue to drop at Skywest, your assumptions are way off. We not be down at 14 months ever. Your friend is moving up 50 per month on the bottom of the list. The movement is not lie at as you move up the seniority list. It wouldn't surprise me for it to reach 2.5 to 3 years here, but it's not getting much lower than that. There are 100's of lifers here. Some are still FOs.