After re-reading the Manpower Updates, I believe all that was previously spoken of regarding May, was that Manpower expected to get updated by the Network Planning group in May on the preliminary numbers for the summer of '19. With that update they would then be able to start planning the necessary Manpower vacancies and training that will be needed over this next Fall/Winter/Spring to be ready to fly the schedule for that summer. So, I do think that the Vacancy bid that we will see in May is news.

As far as effective dates go, technically, they can issue a vacancy bid up to 6 months before the effective date, but the norm has actually been 4 months.

I think that the vacancy bid that has to come out in May will be almost exclusively on the bottom end of the seniority spectrum, so I would think it will keep with the 4 month effective date string and prob be effective at the end of September. It will allow folks to move around the system on the A320 and 737 FO seat (maybe some 756 as well) and whatever is leftover will be used for the Furlough returns and New Hires. Then I would guess we will have an early July Vacancy as the first vacancy that is set up to start the training in the Fall.

I hope I am wrong, and we see bigger bids earlier, but I figure they don't want to send anybody that is currently on the line out to training before the Fall (need us to cover this summer's flying). So, they don't need to get a bid out before July for any of us currently flying. That would give them some time with the new plan from Network Planning, to orchestrate their plan with the DENTK on how we are going to train all the people we need to train.

With some luck there are enough categories that Manpower feels are "overstaffed", so they will issue a bigger vacancy bid now and just use the overstaffed category folks for training assignments this summer. If that were to happen, then I think the bid would likely have a later effective date, as it gives Manpower more time to train the folks without having to pay them. Unfortunately, that could also mean a longer time before they would have to activate your lateral.

All I can say is that with all the new airplanes coming and all the retirements coming, everything at DENTK better be a well oiled machine this winter!!