TOGALOCK

I don’t completely disagree with you since, as you correctly stated, staffing needs are truly a function of block hours, not just how many units of flying aluminum we have on properly. However, remember that hiring and staffing are largely predictive, not reactive to a current environment. With the amount of airplane deliveries coming, Frontier will likely find themselves in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation. There is no question that leisure travel will come back faster than both business and international travel. While it’s likely that, in 2021, we won’t see total emplanement numbers meet or exceed 2019 numbers, there is a good chance that *leisure* numbers WILL meet, or even exceed (due to pent up demand) 2019 leisure levels come late summer/early fall. Obviously, this is dependent on the vaccine and people not starting to keel over at the one month mark from their injection.

As I said, Frontier is in a tough spot. Remember, we have a lot of deferred deliveries. They are still coming at a later date and, when they do, will only increase the rate that aircraft are coming on property due to the fact that the deferrals will be getting delivered alongside other non-deferred deliveries. Imagine if we didn’t hire anyone this year… That means we wouldn’t have hired a single soul for 2020 deliveries or 2021 deliveries. So, come 2022 we would have to hire, train and upgrade to cover the previous two years of aircraft deliveries as well as the scheduled 2022 deliveries AND deferred deliveries that will be delivered in 2022. That would likely create a training demand that we simply can’t cover.

I would put money that we will at least offer class dates to those previous interviewees who were offered a position, but never a class date. Even putting 100 pilots, and associated upgrades, in the hopper will alleviate some of the training bottleneck in the future as well as staffing shortages if leisure travel comes back at a good clip in the not-too-distant future.
Remember, it wasn’t that many years ago where they hired like gangbusters every spring and then by summer we were “overstaffed” and the company was offering COLAS. Granted, this was under the old contract. Now it would cost them significantly more to have a bunch of first year pilots sitting around, so who knows what the company is going to do. In any case, I'm sure it's a constantly changing metric for the company and it will probably require a strategic balancing act.