Originally Posted by
BStill
Is there a way to know/predict/estimate when will be the first new-hire class to get assignments to the 737?
I have a CJO with a class date in a few months. I had originally thought a 737 new-hire bid might be a good thing... but not likely to happen that soon.
Was also hoping to do some voluntary TAD across the system during my first year to shop the bases for my next (and hopefully last) household move (and for the soft money to augment the awful Year 1 pay), but it sounds like the 737's will be concentrated in the Florida bases, at least for the first few years?
Should the 737 training program be a concern, more-so than their established Airbus training? (I'm previously typed in neither.) What is the general plan for 737 training? Out-sourced? or building an internal program from scratch?
Will they eventually start retiring Airbus tails and replacing them with 737 tails? or too soon to say?
Could be as soon as July 31st class according to the latest information that has been shared with the pilots.
We no longer have a "virtual domicile" base where you can shop bases with constant TDYs. TDY-outs are based on where there is excess staffing based on off-seasonality and overstaffing, while TDY-ins are based on the opposite. So it's hard to predict which base is most likely to TDY-out. The ones that will have TDY outs in the coming months after summer are the ones that a new hire couldn't be awarded right now anyways as they're going off season...think VPS. Also, the very slow months generally have no TDYs whatsoever.
737 training will be an internal program, non-AQP. While our 320 training is generally good (not great), this is only after many many kinks were worked out. It remains to be seen how 737 training will go.
And they are planning to keep airbus around and continue shopping them. They do plan to retire a few of them, such as the 319s and the 320s that don't have or cannot have the "space flex" or whatever they're called lavatories in the back, however, if and when we have more pilots they plan to spool up aircraft utilization as they are underutilized by about 20% right now. Of course all of this is contingent on management resolving their ongoing labor issues.
The most concerning thing for any potential pilot is being assigned the 737 and potentially being bound to SFB or PIE. Even if you live there, you could potentially only be offered a vacancy on a 320 in another base, be seat locked to that, and not be able to obtain the 737 in SFB or PIE... Once they start the vacancies for 737 in those bases, vacancies for the 320 will stop as they will slightly shrink the size of that fleet in the base.