Most of the very junior captains on the seniority list have mid 3000 seniority numbers. About 1700 from the bottom of the 5200 on the seniority list. Attrition will probably really accelerate with everyone hiring now. Last month was near 100, but 15 of those were new hires in training. About 60 captains.
Attrition combined with growth is going to require a lot of new captains. Lots of new aircraft coming, but it sounds like a lot of the United 200s will be going away. I wonder if it will be a net loss of aircraft by 2023-24.
One thing for those on the outside looking in to understand is that most FOs don't take the first available upgrade. Sure a few do, but the vast majority wait until they would have some seniority in the left seat. There's still a 1000+ FOs senior to the junior CA that can bid over to the left seat when openings occur.
Attrition plus growth might easily require over 1000-1200 new captains in the next 18 months. That would still leave nearly 1500 current FOs waiting to upgrade.
This last round of upgrades was 2.7 years for the junior guy (CRJ). Of course there was 15 months of Covid delay in there. I suppose the good news is ERJ CA is down to around four years at this point.
Last edited by Utah; 07-09-2021 at 08:27 PM.