The marching orders for the newly hired SVP was to maximize efficiency of the pilot group. That's why they ran it "a little hot" (they still are). That's the optimizer coming aboard (the circa 2018 one). That's the reason behind the commuter threats, the sick call badgering. The bread crumbs are there, just follow them.

I'm kind of in hockey's camp now, I was one who thought they would hire more this year and on in to next. We will hire next year, but the 1500+ numbers I don't see happening. Especially with the continued delays in MAX and NEO. They want a leaner operation out of us. I don't think we'll hire 1500+ next year, more around ~800 ish. Flight Ops has looked at the data over the last 2 years and they are going to continue to stretch the fleets to the breaking point manning wise. It's all about profit. Nothing more. They'll take the hits in IROPs because those are few and far between. Day to day is what they are looking at. They'll push for any opportunity to maximize our use. They are going to take it and run with it.

This pilot group has always had a decent sized contingent of pilots that carried the water for management. We had dudes flying premium when folks were furloughed. We have dudes that didn't even know about UNA, despite all of DALPA's comms about it (3/4 of them don't read that stuff anyway), they will exercise their contractual rights and all else be danged. They will wear hats in a "hat's off for a new contract" campaign. They'll make gate PA's push wheel chairs, toss bags, and go grab bags of ice. They'll make side deals with CS. They'll fatigue shame you, they'll besmirch commuters and brag about how little sick time they've used. We've got a fairly decent contingent of these types working here and it doesn't serve us well when the rest of us are trying to be good unionists. I don't see that changing anytime soon.