Originally Posted by
Fuseplug
Skewed is right. Junior went from a 2010 hire to a May 2016 hire over the course of six months. I'm still perplexed as to how quickly that happened.
Easy. The AirTran merger displaced a lot of pilots out of their huge ATL base, which SWA took over and shrank.
Many of those pilots moved but a lot commuted for years waiting to get back into the base.
They just hit the end of the former trannies last month in the vacancy bid. There will still be onesies and twosies that either flow back into atl or bid out to junior bases, but by and large the vacancies are now being filled by pilots hired after 2014 who want to be based in ATL. There are not that many pilots who fit that bill.
Based on this month, I would bet any future growth to ATL is going to be extremely junior pilots, maybe even new hires soon. Most guys post 2014 would take a huge seniority hit by moving to that base, so will stay away unless they live there or can easily commute there.