I can believe both possibilities, but I’m not sure how to rationalize waiting till January to restart new hire classes. In an attempt to read the tea leaves for some inbounds buds, I went through the conversion and displacement training schedules to try and figure out what the company might do. I don’t know what the max training throughput is for any of the fleets, so I have no real idea where openings might exist for new hires. Caveat: I’m not an actual proctologist, I just play one on TV, so YMMV. Short(-ish) version:

1) The August CR newsletter said 231 positions went unfilled from the AE, but when you add up the listed positions, it came out to 300. I think the discrepancy was the 68 NYC320B positions, which the CR newsletter also mentioned not backfilling.

2) The conversion schedule shows the last OE starts in May, which conveniently aligns with being complete for summer flying.

3) I would surmise that the company would also want new hires OE complete for summer flying, so that would mean March training starts at the latest, and February for their indoc. I can’t imagine trying to move 200 plus through after completing all of the conversions. With some bidders deferring conversion to allow others to populate the ranks of the reserves first, there may be openings for new hires to start training in the fall. Although anyone can add up the number of conversions for each fleet month by month from the published schedule, it doesn’t give any indication on how many additional training openings there are.

4) I think the clock is almost out on notifying new hires to start indoc in September, so that leaves Oct-Feb, 6 months to start 230-270 new hires, or about 40-45 per month.

5) Maybe notices go out next week for a 1 October new hire class, maybe not. The logic and evidence available to pilots is not always consistent with how the company makes (or follows through on) decisions.

Anyone with better insight, please throw in with what you know.