Originally Posted by
FangsF15
All good points. One other factor I should have included as also contributing strongly to upgrade percentage rising in 2019 and 2020: the “pause” in hiring in the fall of 2018, which led to the infamous summer of 2019 being “run a little hot”. And the remaining time up to Covid being short staffed.
Things will ebb and flow, but as long as hiring continues at a reasonable pace, we will continue to see NB available in the mid 80s%. IMO. Also, things can change rapidly when external forces put pressure on the seniority list. If the music slows down greatly, or heaven forbid stops, the thousands of pilots who are saying “no thanks“ to upgrade will gobble up the few opportunities that exist. Especially if that happens for an extended period time, like years. Plan accordingly
I think this is a big factor right now. With GS/SS going out heavily in a lot of categories, it's not too hard for a senior FO to make big bucks without working terribly hard if you know how to work the system. Upgrading right now might net a bigger W-2 at the end of the year by a little bit but probably for a lot more days worked. Plus the senior FO is guaranteed every key day off in the year that they want. I would agree that if green slips dry up that will drive upgrade more senior for a while. The question is what would cause staffing to improve so much that GS become rare? I don't see the company intentionally hiring up to that point, so the only thing that would cause it would be a major slowdown in the economy or another black swan. The recession that was supposed to happen over a year ago still hasn't materialized, so it seems like we've got a few years until the next "normal" recession comes around.