When is united going to learn they need to start infusing money into their regionals yesterday. They are all imploding. The CPP is a joke.

 

The less management pays their frontline employees, the more they can reward themselves with huge pay increases and additional stock options!

 

Losing flying and no longer "industry leading" contract, which the TA won't be. The hiring bubbled popped here very quickly and United doesn't put up with this BS like AA did.

But we have reputation which management continues to destroy little by little every passing day.

 

Trying to validate recent information that hiring classes have been less than filled and dropping, upgrade times holding close to 3 years and reserve time increasing in MKE/ORD. Is my info correct?

 

TLDR: nothing has changed for better or worse.

Classes have never been completely full to the best of my knowledge with a possible few exceptions. They can handle 24 per class but typically have around 10-15. The most junior captain is around 2 years 10 months but that will drop dramatically due to a “cliff” in the seniority list. Reserve time is not increasing in ORD and MKE. Still around 3 months depending on how fast you get through training.

 

Actually one thing did change. There’s a new TA. Details on that should be released this week. It will hopefully include some improvements in work rules. Pay will probably increase slightly as well.

 

I heard from an instructor that the Jan classes were very low but that that is usual due to the holidays. Heard Feb and March were better. Confirmed class of 13 a few weeks ago per someone that spoke to the class. Heard we now have 3 sims leased full time - up from 2, and that is helping the turnaround time some.

That said the numbers coming in the door to ATW are not as important as the numbers coming off IOE. That number I have no clue on.

On the upgrade front - 2 years 9 months was the peak, and is now at 2 years 11 months as of June. Last vacancy for July had no upgrades and I believe that is only the second month skipped since upgrades started last fall. I do think 24 months is still realistic as we are now upgrading 2015 hires and a lot left AWA pre-United CPA announcement and then we didn’t hire many in 2016 in addition to those that moved on during the uncertainty of our future that year. So I still think 24 months is still realistic for the 2017 hires. 18 months? Don’t see that right now anyway.

As far as reserve times I couldn’t say. Looks like the IAD junior FO line holder is July 2017 and that is the most senior base on both seats by far. So if ORD or MKE are increasing in regards to reserve times, then it’s all relative since it would still be very low. The people I talk to say they spent 1-3 months in reserve in those bases. Spoke to a MKE line holder recently that got a line while still in ATW when MKE opened. So any reserve time would be an increase if the baseline is “0”.

 

Doubtful. The biggest QOL increase that could happen is getting rid of junior manning and ZW is already giving away 10+ flights a day to other airlines because they can't staff even with rampant junior manning. No way they'd give up that tool. Classes have been less than half full for awhile now with a very high washout rate. They're getting people in the door but they're not getting a ton of people who can pass training through the door.

The new TA needs to be incredible or things are just going to get worse. The seniority list has barely grown this year (by less than 15 people) and they lost something close to 25 pilots last month.

 

Well it’s pointless to speculate. We will know in a week or so!

 

The MEC still has to review it after it's written. The pilot group might never see it if the MEC votes it down. If it's a 1% raise they better not send it to the pilots.