Yes. This exactly. (I'm one of them lol). To be more specific, if you look at the latest vacancy award, look closely at the distribution of the seniority numbers of people bidding for NBCA. Look at how many people in the 14K number range had their bids in. It's clear that the percentage of people who are bidding for NBCA, within that seniority range, is quite high -- in other words there are fewer people deciding to delay upgrade, than you would normally expect. Almost everyone in that range is bidding for the left seat.

To see this, compare the current distribution of NBCA bidders in the 26-07 bid to, say, the distribution of bidders from the last bid we had in 2024 before the new contract fully took effect. In some cases in the current bid, I'm seeing numbers that are literally sequential (like 14,536 and 14,537 -- not the exact numbers but I'm using that to illustrate a point).

To put it another way: UPA23 alleviated the two biggest obstacles to most people who were considering upgrading into a junior base: commuting and reserve rules. By providing positive space commuting for a solid year to first time captains (or a paid move), it made it soooo much easier to upgrade. Also, with the tremendous improvement to reserve, it made it much easier for people to tolerate life as a junior reserve CA.

So I think that's what we're seeing now. There's a lot less holding people back from upgrading, and with all the former CAs we hired, a lot more people who would like to get back to the left seat ASAP. That's why I think traditional estimates of future upgrade times are too optimistic. I hope I'm wrong though!