Not true in terms of hiring at all. Not really true in terms of EWR, just a problem with getting Captains that effects where FOs go.

Lets say you are the Manpower guy at UA trying to cover the flying that over 400 737s do throughout the system, after taking care of that you will get some coffee.

You take the info from aircraft routing on what flights are going to be flown in the future. You take the contract rules / FAR rules. You take the hotel/transportation costs. You take where you have pilot bases. You plug all of that (and more) into the fancy Gonkulator that you have and it spits out the trips that represent the most efficient way to cover all the flying. It then spits out how many crews you should have in each of your domiciles to cover that set of trips.

You take that info and that becomes your plan for staffing and you put out vacancy bids to get the staffing for each of the domiciles to match the staffing spit out by the Gonkulator. Easy enough, go back to drinking coffee!

Then something weird happens. The vacancy bid closes and you have unfilled Captain assignments in SFO and EWR! You were expecting/need unfilled FO assignments to give out to new hires, but unfilled Captain assignments are a new thing and you can't give them out to new hires and can't "force" them on existing pilots. Crap! coffee is gonna have to wait.

At first you think this is just a weird one off , so you send out the next vacancy bid with more Captain vacancies at the locations you want Captains to be based. Unfortunately, the problem gets worse (now even DEN, IAD and ORD along with SFO and EWR have unfilled Captains!) Still no coffee for you.

So, then you go back to your gonkulator and this time you tell it the staffing you think you can actually achieve in the various domiciles that have unfilled Captains and have it run a new set of trips to cover the flying with this new constraint. It spits out a new set of trips (not as efficient) and the associated staffing needed. This allows you to put out another vacancy bid with more Captain vacancies in places that people are still bidding (IAH for instance) Since the trips are built out of the domicile for a crew pair, you also move the FO vacancy opportunities to those locations. Thinking about coffee, but still gonna have to wait.

This process keeps repeating itself every 4 - 6 weeks as you try to get enough people to take a Captain bid to staff all the flying. Eventually, you are willing to give out Captain bids anywhere somebody wants one as even IAH ended up with unfilled!!!!! (hell we even opened MCO and LAS and I think LAS has now had unfilled Captains!!)

This is the big issue right now for Manpower. The result for new hires is that in order to keep the staffing balanced in the various domiciles almost all of the 737 new hires need to start in IAH because that is where they are able to get the most Captains.

If/when we finally get a new contract, we will see if the changes are enough to make people more interested in bidding over to NB Captain.

In the fantasy world of Manpower we will get back to a situation where there is sufficient demand to increase the Captain staffing at EWR and SFO (and everywhere else at this point). At that point Manpower will be trying to get the staffing balanced back to the staffing the Gonkulator spits out using the original "most efficient" run. Balancing to those staffing levels will happen over a good long while as they would just offer the new Captain assignments needed for the growth in the places that they really want them and if pilots bid out of places that they didn't want them anymore they would try to increase the staffing in places they really prefer.

With all the planes we have coming in, the training pipeline is going to be maxed for awhile, so getting to optimum staffing in each location is a secondary goal that will be behind getting enough people trained into any location to cover the schedule whether most efficient or not.

Because of all of this it seems like movement is slow if you only look at EWR 737, but I assure you that EWR 737 is a one off and movement is crazy fast overall. Guy I flew with today just finished IOE as a new hire on the 756 and he is a line holder in SFO for August with 5 guys junior to him also guaranteed a line!!

EWR is and will continue to be a junior domicile and the movement there will be fast and furious despite what this current NB Captain issue is causing

Now back to that coffee