Originally Posted by marcal

There are a lot of ways to artificially extend a seat lock. If you are awarded a bid Jan 1, your lock is up Jan 1, two years later. You then need to wait for an AE where you are senior enough to bid for what you want and then wait for training which could be as much as six months later, or even 12 months later if its a displacement bid(which will come with the MSP and ATL MD88 flying in the next few years). Crew resources I guarantee is looking at strategic timing of the displacement bids to delay training events with these bids. I would if I were in there shoes.

Just as an example, lets say you had a seat lock that expired last June. Let's say you were waiting for the seat lock to expire to bid 320A in NYC. Well one month earlier, was the last AE that awarded ANY 320A's in NYC. So you've now been sitting about a year past your seat lock expiration waiting on an AE to come that will award 320A's that hopefully you are senior enough to hold! Combined with waiting for training, you could be looking at much, much longer than two years to move. Unless you are planning on bidding to a narrow body right seat, my guess is seat locks will be much longer than two years.