I’m gonna “do math,” which is always risky, but here’s my back-of-the-napkin tinfoil-hat take.

Management said roughly a 25% reduction across LAX + SFO over the next two bids. If you assume that gets split roughly evenly, call it ~13% per bid — and to make it appropriately Alaska, assume worst-case numbers.

SFO CA BPL: 214

13% of 214 ≈ 28.

Round it Alaska-style: ~30 displaced.

LAX CA BPL: 269

13% of 269 ≈ 35.

Again, worst-case: ~36, but if we want to “Alaska math” our way conservative, call it ~30 from SFO + 36 from LAX = 66 displaced captains in round one.

Now, pair that with what’s actually being added:

SAN is getting ~80 CA vacancies, plus the VP said ~20–30 system upgrades on top of that. Even if we low-ball it to 15 real upgrades, that still means the number of total upgrades (SAN + system-wide) exceeds the number of displacements.

This is where the human-factors roulette wheel comes in:
• Some senior FOs will chase upgrades.

• Some junior CAs who are currently commuting may decide SAN is better than downgrading.

• Others may choose to downgrade rather than commute.

• Nobody can model that behavior cleanly — but the math still leans toward more upgrades than displacements, not a downgrade bloodbath.

With conservative numbers, I get something like:
66 displacements

≈ 80 SAN vacancies + 15 low-ball upgrades

→ Net ~29–31 upgrades

Again, that’s lowballing the system-wide upgrade piece and assuming maximum displacement.

Nothing here looks like the sky is falling. If anything, SAN plus the system upgrades create enough suction that most of the turbulence gets absorbed.

As for PBP, between the IT outage and the federal shutdown, nobody should be expecting anything above about three percent. Hope for more, but I’m gonna gamble mine on Ohio state football future national camps to double it

that would also track with the hiring class of 20 next week puts down to 40 vacancies still left. this San Diego base opening plus additional upgrades will create about 50 additional vacancies getting us to the 90s hiring in Q1 for a total of 130 any of us thought. Skys not falling