Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Everybody has an opinion, but here is mine:
This is a unique opportunity for the L/ULCCs that may not come again for another decade. The regionals,, even good ‘career’ regionals like Republic and Skywest, are starting to come apart. Business models dependent on that feed are highly stressed right now and the demise of many of those regionals will stress them further. And that demise is also going to open up gates in hubs throughout the country. It is an awesome time to open up new routes in competition to some of the legacies, and despite the mantra of ‘we bring in new passengers and aren’t in competition with the legacies,’ in a lot of places we are, or at least they are in competition with NK. Just look up ‘the Southwest effect.’ And increasingly, as their business and international travel lags, the legacies are paying attention to their economy sections, unbundling fares, doing more VFR and point to point flying, even with aircraft unsuited or poorly configured for it. And most of the legacies simply no longer have the free cash flow - not right now - to allow them to bracket a ULCC flight with a couple of deeply discounted loss-leader legacy economy flights like they once did, and already have done with startups like Avelo, not against NK and probably not even against F9.
This is the ULCCs big chance, with open gates and decreased competition and a lot of regional guys about to see their companies dissolve who would be happy to come to NK, if the CBA were brought up to where it needs to be. I expect management to pressure the pilots - it’s against their religion to give up a dime they can avoid giving up - but I don’t think they are stupid enough to miss a golden opportunity.
I think this is accurate in some ways but it ignores the "big chance" this is for the big 4.
The chance for them is to focus their hiring on as many pilots from the ULCCs as possible. Balancing their hiring something like 3 to 1 of ULCC guys vs regional guys, will allow them to desimate the ULCC staffing model while also showing the regionals that guys there can come straight to AA,DL,FDX,WN,UA,UPS rather than taking a detour to the ULCCs. So can the training capacity of the ULCCs withstand the short term spike in attrition? Can you hire/train enough in the next 3 months to withstand the attrition that will happen in the next 6 months. If you cannot then the summer is a huge problem. I think this is already a major problem at the regionals, but I also think that AA, DL, and UA recognize this and since they currently represent the majority of the hiring that is happening, they have the ability to change the target of their hiring and have it start/continue to inflict real pain on the ULCCs.
I am not sure what the plan/capacity is at Spirit, but seeing the plan at Frontier of 40 a month in the hiring tells me they are not going to keep up. Not sure what Spirit's current hiring plan is, and not sure how successful they are at getting the number they want in class, but figure you have to start by late Mar or early Apr to be an asset that can help by June sometime. So that means that hiring in the next 2 to 3 months (at the most) is what needs to match your attrition between now and the end of June.