Excargodog

I'm looking on the right hand side of my screen where a Compass ad is flashing. It's saying 18-24 month upgrades to Captain.

OK, the total pilot population at Compass according to APC is currently 663. I imagine there are actually some management pilots above and beyond that and some reservist pilots called up for a tour, but let's look at that 663 and use that for a baseline.

Now I realize that Compass screwed up with the hiring freeze, and they are short on FOs, so let us say that 55% of those 663 are already captains. For simplicity's sake, let us make that 365 Captains and 300 FOs. And since we've already got a class in training and another one booked up, if I were a newbie candidate for Compass I'd be looking at probably another 50 that will be ahead of me on the seniority list before I can seriously expect to get a seniority number.

Now this isn't rocket surgery. Anyone that can be trusted with a weight and balance can do this math.

Now eight upgrades a month is 96 upgrades a year. 350 divided by 96 is 3.64 years, basically three years and eight months for a newbie looking at that ad.

Now I fully realize that there were times in the regionals where a four year upgrade would have been considered totally awesome, but that isn't the case today. Perhaps that's where some of Compass's senior FOs are going, to somewhere they'll at least be made a street captain and can start acquiring TPIC, even if they spend an eternity - or at least a thousand hours TPIC - on reserve. Because, frankly, times have changed, and even senior FOs have options now.

But those new hires have options too, or at least many of them.

Granted, the newbie who can't do long division (or weight and balances) isn't going to be able to figure out that it's not really 18-24 months but rather more like double that, but is that really the guy you want to hire? Seems like that's going to do nothing but drive up your new qual attrition rate, not a good deal for Compass and certainly not a good deal for the guy whose resume is now blighted with a training failure.

Which would leave you with the newbies that woukd sign on KNOWING you were starting out the relationship by lying to them. Man, that doesn't seem like a good deal, no loyalty there either way.

Maybe it's time for management to just man up and admit they screwed the pooch with the hiring freeze and there are GOING to be consequences. Deal with it. If you need retention bonuses to keep your senior FO's or captains from leaving, negotiate for it. If you can't actually expect 18-24 month upgrades, pull the ads.

But starting the relationship with newbies by making promises you have no intention of keeping can only poison the well right at the start. You don't want to do that - trust me on that.