Originally Posted by
Aquaticus
I wouldn't listen to a delta pilots opinion about United. They drink managements propoganda about how amazing they are on a pretty frightening basis. I would ask a few non-odd friends who have made the jump to different airlines about how their last few trips went and the United people will have enjoyed their trips with a few small exceptions. There is a pretty wide gap in culture that shouldn't be ignored.
That deltas guys numbers were a few years outdated. UAL is currently around 14000 pilots on the seniority list RIGHT now. Our seniority list is only updated every July here at UAL. Delta owning Europe prepandemic is an opinion. Delta lacks significant number of widebodies, outsources a lot of international, a lot more non-union labor boosting bottom line, and flies with two captains on a majority of augmented routes. Plusses and minuses with each. Their profit sharing uses a more favorable formula than ours that is significant but we have more widebody people on payroll with a lot more widebody first officers. Having those dollars spread around more evenly vs having pools of people chasing those dollars to make you have a higher relative seniority on a narrow body for years... everything has a Ying to the yang.
LTD is a much more nuanced conversation than most people are willing to comprehend. Ours is tax free up to 11,000 right now, 90 days to activate, and to get the max 11,000 you would need an hourly rate in the mid 260's (I can't remember but you need to be left seat) to get the max, and if you live in nj or california with disability you have to pay that back. Deltas formula is higher with a retirement contribution but they have a different calculation for the payout based on your past 12 months that I don't actually like. Some plans aren't after tax dollars as well so it is very difficult to get a fair comparison. We have a ways to go and the last tumi TA had some improvements that will hopefully be improved upon further.
As for United numbers, we have just under 12,500 ACTIVE per the latest vacancy bid.
Remember we still have a lot of guys who took the early out during the pandemic that won't be officially purged from the seniority list until they hit 65. The seniority numbers won't be accurate until this upcoming summer. I think everyone who took the early out will age out by then.
We also had a large portion of pilots who took mil leave prior to the pandemic, so that also skews the numbers.
The number that matters is the Active pilots when you see the seniority numbers. That's the most accurate when the bulletin goes out.
We are still at roughly 2000-2500 pilots smaller than DL or AA as a rough gestimate.
If United Next comes to fruition, within 5 years, we could easily be much larger that AA or DL.
Pre-pandemic, vacancy 20-02, we were at just over 11,500 active pilots.
The early retirements and Leave's of Absence took us down to about 10,100 active pilots back in 21.
Now we've recovered and gained a net of just under 2500 pilots in just about 15 months, some hiring, some returns from leave. Although we've been hiring in the meantime, remember that we also have people that are "hired" then leave for DL/SWA/AA/FDX/UPS pretty quickly after getting hired. All the hiring numbers we hear don't take that attrition into account.
So all those fancy numbers of pilots we hired really aren't what matters. What matters is the number of active pilots grow. That's when you see real movement. That's been pretty aggressive lately. We've restored or grown our active pilot count by almost 25% in just over 1 year.
Be safe out there y'all. A lot of new people here and everywhere.