To keep the math simple: at 1 of 300 hired it’s 10% which means if hired in the first few classes you won’t be on reserve. Likely open flying. Maybe red eye line at best. Everyone else in that group of 300 will be on reserve.

At 1 of 500 hired you’re going to be a line holder with no red eyes. You won’t be able to trade or get days off you want but at least you won’t be flying red eyes every trip. Mostly you’ll get SE Alaska flying all winter. It’s not for everyone but I find the flying challenging and it’s making me a better pilot. It’s quite a bit of work and it’s not for everyone. I know this well because 1 of 500 percentage wise well that is my seniority now, after almost 4 years.

I think anyone who is thinking about a realistic growth rate at AS can see how being hired after the first few classes could be extremely challenging from a QOL standpoint. You’ll likely be on reserve for quite a long time unless hopefully our total lack of scope is fixed and ideally our staffing model changes quite a bit. Both things that management has publicly told the pilot group they absolutely will not do.

I was lucky and hired at the beginning of a wave of 400 pilots. Of course they were saying it was going to be 800.

Historically AS hires 1/2 of the pilots that they say they will. 2000 by 2000 is something I recall our sim instructors laughing about in initial training.

With the various Covid variants stirring the pot I’d be very careful and thinking about the worst case for the hiring figures and how I’d do on reserve flying red eyes for years.


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