Originally Posted by
LoneStar32
It will definitely go up for at least a short time. Here is what is going to happen: All those senior FOs that have been holding off upgrade for "QOL" reasons (lol) have just had a big 'ooooo s^^t' moment. They have been holding off upgrade because they convinced themselves it was better QOL not really factoring the huge pay bump or they have been holding off for fear of failure during upgrade training. Whatever the reason, most if not all of those people are going to be putting in for first available upgrade once they start again. That means that most of the <2 year upgrades, including those in the canceled June and July awards, are going to have to wait a few more months longer as the senior FOs take up the spots in the next few classes.
This assumes that everything recovers to what it was like before. I highly doubt this happens. If Republic's fleet size, or number of pairings from UA/AA/DL decrease, upgrade times will skyrocket. If the big 6 airlines are not hiring or have slowed down hiring, upgrade times will skyrocket. And this is just not Republic, this will happen at every regional.
However this turns out, unless FOs delayed upgrade for family medical/emergency situations, and have done it just because they enjoy a couple more days off a month or the fact they don't have to commute or sit reserve for a period of time, they have already made a huge mistake.
I am at a different regional, but this post is spot on and is what I expect to happen once this pass. I spoke with quite a few of my FOs at my shop who I expected should have upgraded why they have held out. The main excuses were, don’t want to commute, want to reduce time on reserve as a Captain, or a specific base. Then the music halted. There a few that were holding on that I convinced to take the first upgrade, some of them are now trying to finish OE now and some of them just had bad timing as they didn’t have the hours before the music stopped.
The name of the game is to check boxes and work on getting out of the regional then go for QOL at mainline or QOL at regional once you got boxes checked (at this point I would be looking for outside opportunities like additional type, wide body experience, or LCC).
The upgrade pay bump is definitely worth the short term QOL hit. Luckily, I now sit reserve in a base where I live and I live in one of our junior CA bases. The money I’ve made in the left seat has made up for the lost holiday pay I lost out on as a FO has I was going through upgrade training during the holidays and them some. That’s just me.