Originally Posted by
Gone Flying
So I will need some help here because I obviously was not around for the past 30+ years, but with the exception of 2000-2001 hires, couldn’t most pilots at DL hold CA by the 12 year mark?
Airlinefiles.com has a jr CA snapshot going all the way back to 2005 and it is usually under 10 years (again excluding those hired from 2000-2001, which by any objective standard probably had the worst career trajectory and seniority progression of any pilots at DL hired after deregulation)
historically speaking, hasn’t jr CA typically been around 60-65% systemwide seniority? I wonder what keeps causing it to drop to pilots with 90% company seniority recently?
18 years to WB CA is probably not going to happen for most at DL. Im projected to be in the seniority range of WB CA plug around the 25 year mark and would be thrilled if that ends up happening.
for someone hired today it will take closer to 27-28 years to hit that number.
I was hired in the latter part of 2000. My first upgrade happened summer of 2016, but I held out for the 320. I could have held MD88 around late 2014 I think and 717 in 2015, but at that point, as a pretty senior 7ER FO, I had a pretty decent QOL and didn’t want to go to the Maddog. Luckily for me, I was one of the younger pilots in class and have time left, but yeah, the difference between the career expectation vs. reality was striking for the first 12 years.
Having said that, the career of everyone behind us that got stuck at the regionals post 9/11 was even worse, and many with dreams of flying for the Legacies their whole life, probably became lifers at the regionals, or changed careers, so don’t read my post as whining. I still feel lucky for the career I’ve had, compared to my peers that came up at the same time I did. Timing sucked for all of us, but I’ve still had it better than a lot of Pilots. Not as amazing as I’d hoped, but not bad either. Don’t feel sorry for us.