Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Absolutely. Will that FO attrition be increased or decreased by slowing the upgrade OPPORTUNITIES of those FOs to upgrade to captain? Is this an effective strategy? Or is it simply going to make those FOs try harder to find a different job that will advance their careers that they can get without Compass TPIC time which apparently many are already doing?
To an extent, this seems like boring a hole in your leaky boat to let the water out. These senior FOs DO HAVE OTHER OPTIONS, even at LCCs and majors. They CERTAINLY have the option to be street captains at any of a number of other regionals.
I think that management knows that it's not a long-term solution. We lose far more than 8 captains/month, so it's definitely not sustainable. However, when you look at who we have on reserve right now, for several days in a row if not weeks at a time, SYSTEMWIDE, not just in one particular base, but in all of them, we have literally 0 FOs on reserve once open time flying is covered. One FO calls out sick? Someone's getting junior manned or a critical pay trip offer is made because there's literally no one to staff it.
In addition, every FO is getting awarded 85+ hour lines each month. That's only happening in SEA on the captain side. LAX and PHX captains are able to (at least the senior ones) get 75 hour lines. And it's been a long time since we've had no captain reserves in LAX. We seem to have about 10 captains on reserve in LAX each day that go unused. To balance out the suck and keep flights going, it'd make sense to have fewer captains coming in than are going out for a bit if we're critically short-staffed on FOs. Thus you see them slowing upgrades a bit so they can have both groups working as much as possible rather than having FOs bear all of the burden. When the new hires in training hit the line faster than we continue losing pilots, that's when we'll have turned the corner (and hopefully that'll come soon). That seems to be the mantra I've heard, and it makes sense to me. (disclaimer, I did not hear the employee call today as I was out flying)
TL;DR The 8 upgrades a month is temporary, not the new normal. Can't upgrade FOs to CA without having new FOs to backfill those positions since planes need both CA and FO to fly.