Originally Posted by
CLT Guy
PSA currently has 1100 pilots (1160 on the list, but several people that are already gone are still on the list). In that, there are about 150 that will not/can not flow.
The key, though, is attrition (attrition outside of the flow). We lost 28 last month. The norm lately has been 15-18 per month. Of those, quite a few were within a year of flowing. Delta has been taking a lot of our pilots lately. We have lost several senior pilots to JetBlue and Southwest as well. In the mid range, we have quite a few leaving to Spirit, Atlas, and a couple to Kalitta.
People that were hired 2 years ago move up more than 12 spots a month still.
Here's some math:
If you are #1200, and 150 are lifers/instructors that wont flow, that puts you at #1050.
Now, for simple math, lets estimate that we are flowing 8 a month, and 5 a month are leaving to other airlines as an absolute worst case scenario. (It will be 25-30 per month your first year, but less as you move up the list, so lets just say 5 a month)...
That means that you move up on average 13 spots a month. That is 6 and a half years.
I'm glad they are moving on to greener pastures and current pilots get to enjoy the seniority bump but i have to point out the same thing I did for my fellow Piedmont pilot. This agrument assumes the 13 people resigning are always senior to you, which WILL NOT be true. You will move up to a mid seniority position where that 13 will decrease to an unknown number because people will be more inclined to wait to flow rather than attend job fairs, aggressively network, etc., in order to move on. If the pilot shortage worsens to the point that its just raining legacy airline jobs on everyone then sure, it can be expected for you to always have attrition from the top but that is yet to be seen. It is undeniably misleading to a prospective newhire to count attrition within a flow prediction imho.