I guess that's one way to read it: "Before we kick off what I hope will be an extended series of vacancy bids, we must first take another look at the feasibility of the LAX B777 category."

The LAX 777 announcement is supposed to take place on ~April 25. Anyone expect the LAX 777 to remain open? Anyone, anyone, Ferris, anyone?

Looking at the LAX 777, there are 19 CAs, all of whom can displace to LAX 787 and 18 FOs. For the FOs, 1 can bid LAX 787 CA and the next 12 can bid LAX 787 FO. The other 5 FOs can either go to LAX 756 or SFO 777 or 787.

I'm guessing that management delayed closing LAX 777 until the 747 displacements were trained. Now that almost all 747 pilots have been trained, it seems logical to close the LAX 777 base. The 777 only fits on 3 gates at LAX and they can't park the -300 at United's gates in LAX.

It makes sense that they wanted to get done with all of the surpluses before having too many vacancy bids. Hopefully we'll start seeing a lot of vacancy bids soon. Are there any BESs that are seriously short on pilots?