Originally Posted by fanaticalflyer

Though i agree with your sentiment; the reason they pushed new hires starts to NOV was that the training dept is swamped. That is not an exaggeration. They need to get thru this summer firehose and they'll be able to handle the rest of the strong demand during the fall/winter. I think proper manning is when they are a bit tight during the summer and holidays. If they have to do some SRM during that time, then our staffing is fine. When they have to JRM, then you have an issue, but that has mostly gone goodbye. By the end of the summer, SRM will be basically done for the long haul. look at the trends of SRM from last year to now, and you'll see there is barely any of it left. We are finally getting staffed the right way. L-UAL, which i am, always wanted too many pilots which was ridiculous. Keep the manning tight, and it limits the number of furloughs IF WE EVER NEED THEM. Go too fat on pilots, and it's easier to cut a lot more, since the cost isn't much more. Too many L-UAL guys want more pilots and want work rules that allow more pilots on the lot. That's old school and they need to move on and realize we are not being competitive. Keep manning tight, and if we have to do some senior manning for 4 months, then we save money not being overmanned the other 8 months. And realistically, if you look at SRM numbers, it is prevalent anymore. So it's really minimum 3 months of limited SRM to offset 9 months of good staffing.