Originally Posted by
TexasFlight
My uninformed opinion is we pushed those classes back to clear space for the impending MAX training. FAA has said it expects certification before the middle of the year and it sounds like SWA wants to train everybody at once over the course of a couple months, as opposed to a metered base by base training cycle. The purchase of 3 additional MAX sims supports that. Sucks big time for folks who have class dates and interviews because we will no doubt lose some excellent people, but this saga REALLY needs to come to an end and if it takes a brute force approach to accomplish that then so be it. Good luck to all.
Nobody really knows yet what's going to be required in the MAX training. We could be running classes until the training program is established and then freeze classes, or reduce the volume. We'll still have plenty available simulators that are not MAXes available for new hire, upgrade and recurrent training. I think the reason to stop classes is simply they are sick and tired of everyone complaining how over staffed we are. It also comes down to how much they're paying for those green bars and extra reserves sitting at home. I think they finally realized the MAX is definitely not coming any time soon. And even if this time Boeing's prediction to fix it by the middle of the year is right (they lost their credibility long time ago), we have more than enough people to fly the extra airplanes already, so why hiring more?