Originally Posted by
PhantomHawk
It’s like that at ALL airlines. Upgrade at UAL is about 4 years.......if you want SFO. Many people don’t, so they wait. Upgrade at IAH is about 7 years. Denver is insanely high. But nobody walks around talking about “average upgrade”. The garbage bases are junior, the desirable bases are senior. Always gonna be that way. If you want it bad enough......you’ll take it. I upgraded as soon as I could at XJT. I live in a hub, but I commuted to other bases for almost 3 years.
I get what you’re saying.....but it wasn’t too long ago that EWR was at 8-9 years, and IAH was untouchable. So flynd94 is right, even if you wanna just focus on the negative.
I think you might have misinterpreted what I was saying. Upgrade is what upgrade is. Not what it is “going” to be. The company could not upgrade someone that was hired 2 and a half years ago, right now. Not because of a training back log. Not because of seniority. But because the numbers don’t work. Someone at 2.5 years with the company is at around 1050 out of 1392. Sure, there are a percentage of guys bypassing upgrade. Not many, but they’re there.
If they upgrade a guy that was was 25% down the list, who the heck would be his FO? Another captain? The company would need to hire, train and RETAIN another 300 people overnight, to make it possible for an individual with 2.5 years seniority to become a captain right now. His FO isn’t even on property yet and they are announcing to the industry that his seniority could currently hold a captain position.
So to clarify, I don’t know of any other airline that “forecasts” an award before they are actually even in a state where they could place the individual in the seat. This strategy is used to lure and recruit. When a company does nothing to retain or protect those on property, exposing their game is definitely reasonable.