Originally Posted by
Surprise
I have another theory that since roughly half of the new hires are flow-throughs, a good portion of them will have already established families and other roots in DFW or the east coast. So flow-throughs, on average, will probably prefer to be based no farther west than DFW. That leaves military and street hires as people who’d potentially want LAX, and probably not that many. As this group starts to upgrade, I bet LAX will continue to be the junior base.
I’m often wrong though...
From what I've seen of the awards, the junior base is the one that has a bunch of upgrades in it. This last round, PHL added a bunch. Could be LGA, or MIA, or LAX next time. Seems it ebbs and flows. Either way, it's refreshing to see the movement, it wasn't that long ago that there were 25 year FOs.