Guess we'll agree to disagree.
There are many metrics to use in determining growth (or shrinkage) of our airline.

Yes, I believe that when you look at what number the junior pilot is on the list then and now, you get a good indication of the size of our pilot group and if we have grown or not. (Not talking utilization.. purely pilot staffing numbers)



Using JY who was 12155 at SLI, he is now 9814 (based on Jan Staffing).
That means that in roughly 6 years, he has moved up 2341 numbers.
Thats a ton of guys who have retired (congrats) Passed away (condolences) or been let go (?).
Pretty good numbers.

At the same time, the current bottom guy sits at 12542 which mean there are 2728 pilots that have been hired AFTER the SLI.

Spin it any way you want to, but from a purely manpower Seniority list, we have increased our numbers by 387 pilots.

Maybe we need to differentiate 'growth'.
How many mainline aircraft did we have at SLI vs. today.
How many WB aircraft did we have at SLI vs. today.
How many passengers did we move then vs. now?
How many miles did we fly then vs. now?


I totally get the min.max vs active pilots when they put out a bid.
We still have 'place holders' who will have to decide if they are coming back sometime within the next year, I believe (200ish?).
If those 200 come back, and 200 retire off the list, our list will actually shrink. Not grow.

But it really doesn't matter.. just waste of electrons here.. as long as we are retiring pilots, we need pilots in the training pipeline to keep the machine running.
As long as we are also getting new aircraft that are not CURRENTLY replacement aircraft, we need to grow our airline pilot numbers.

Welcome New Hires!

Someone had a graph on here (a while back) that showed how many we had hired since SLI, and how many had retired. I thought there was a year (or 2) where we retired more than we hired.
Also, there were months where we didn't hire but were still retiring pilots. Only ones coming back were Mil Leave guys/gals and LTD's.

Motch