Originally Posted by
ShyGuy
The junior guys do fine too. When I was 80% I still did pretty good for my trips bid, and more importantly my days off bid. As for the rest, the airbus hiring stopped end of January followed quickly by Boeing. The 4% growth rate is the main reason for the slowdown. On the Airbus side, it’s also the repainting and new interiors that is going to happen on the entire fleet in 18 months. That’s a fairly aggressive schedule, and will take planes out for weeks at a time. And yeah, we’re overstaffed on the Airbus side. That’s why there are daily emails offering premium pay to cover trips.
Serious question: why would anyone come here anymore? 620 retirements in 10 years out of 2,900. That’s barely 21% of the list. If you want ANC there’s Fedex/UPS. SEA is Delta, SF United, and LAX all 4 legacy carriers. PDX is the only unique AS base.
Pilots have asked the, “why come here”, question about EVERY airline in existence. You know that one day an airline is scrapping along barely able to keep the doors open and the next, they’re the IT place to be. It’s happened at UAL, DAL, SW, FDX, UPS, AA....... We all go to where it works best for us and that will never change. My personal opinion is that the current cycle we find ourselves in at AS, like all other cycles, will reverse for the better. Worst case, or best case, depending on how you look at it, AS gets absorbed into another bigger airline and life goes on.