Originally Posted by
CLazarus
Don't get tunnel vision on FO slots. Looking at CA slots is more instructive, DCA 737 CA holding steady at 301 this bid (vs 283 at the start of the last bid). Filling CA slots is tough right now, but the CO can easily send new hires to DCA 737 FO out of indoc. And yeah, similar things are happening at some other bases such a SFO - trying to grow to 250 737 CAs this bid. And yet, there are only 117 SFO 737 FOs to start this bid and no SFO 737 FO vacancies. That imbalance is clearly going to be filled with new hires.
Captain slots definitely tell the story in the longer term right now.
In SFO for instance, they know they will end up with a bunch of unfilled 737 Cap assignments , but they don't need to advertise the 737 FO assignments yet. This is because they will assign all the unfilled Captain assignments to New Hires that will end up being 737 FOs for the next year. When all of those folks become eligible to actually go to 737 Captain school (or actually slightly before) you will see a bunch of new hires getting 737 FO assignments in SFO to replace the upgrading pilots