Fantastic break down and you are spot on that the correct way to look at upgrade is percentage. For prospective hires this post should be exactly how you look at progression. The other part is base and fleet break down, certain bases and fleets trend very differently. But those seem to be in flux with a new generation of pilots finding where they want to go.

I also liked how you broke out the experience of seniority for different eras of hires, fangs. For better or worse pilots hired today will have a different experience than those hired over the last two years, but will actually probably track to be simply “normal.” But there are always going to be mitigating circumstances, look what happened to pilots hired from 98-08, crazy things. But who had Boeing imploding itself on the 737, who had airbuses delayed 6plus months for engines, that now need to be taken off wing again in under 5 years. The 220 has tripped so many times already and is limping. That’s just airplane stuff, without delving into the other section of the news, luckily stepping on the age 67 rake seems to have been avoided.

I tend to agree that as long as wide body delivery is held mostly on schedule and NEOs don’t experience significant delays seniority progression should maintain for at least two years. Not sure how that will affect upgrade times but the percentage to hold upgrade I think in the mean time moves more senior for about a year due to the 4000 new hires over the last 36 months feeling comfortable to move to the next seat will create a slight shift in bidding, the 7ER pilots being the wild card in all of the movement.