And has been completely stagnant to slow slip back ever since.

 

There’s been no slip back. Are we feeling sorry for the guys holding their captain seats at 5 years now?.

 

No one is upgrading at 5 years. That’s his point.

 

Well of course not today. **** hit the fan after those guys upgraded. Point is they’ve held onto their seats. If Boeing gets their **** together we should get back there considering we almost hit the 18 months where we didn’t hire from ‘19-‘21. Putting all our eggs in the Boeing basket doesn’t give warm fuzzies going forward though.

 

And probably got hired after spending a long 1 1/2 yrs at a regional.

 

There has been mild slip back in seniority for junior captains. That's just the facts. The scarce upgrade bids since the door plug have gone way more senior, a handful have chosen to downgrade across those bids, and another handful have been forced to downgrade. Personally, I don't dwell on it 24/7 like someone else here and I don't hate my job or life because of it, but it is undeniably true. I also share the skeptical sentiment that Boeing will suddenly reverse 15 years of trend and start performing as promised. If they happen to actually start delivering 10's early to mid 27 I will be really surprised. Our competition has managed to grow over these last few years while we haven't. I expect that we will reverse that trend, but I'm not so optimistic that it will happen for us as planned in 27. Also, keep your sympathy, I don't need it. Instead just be honest with yourself about how our careers have performed over the last few years compared to our industry peers.

 

Yes the industry in general and AS specifically has experienced slow growth or near-stagnation over the last few years because Reasons. It happens in this business.

Yes some very junior (in seat) people got stuck in lifestyle situations they probably weren't planning on. At least the junior CA's have some options.

 

Pretty glib minimization of what it's actually like to be junior here. I don't hear junior captains complaining about not getting "princess trips," I hear them complaining about 90+ percent unstacking, zero schedule flexibility, unlimited conversions, etc.

 

Even without Alaska buying us. Doesn’t seem
like you guys would have grown. At least we’ve hired 150 or so since you announced to buy us.

 

We have hired significantly more than 150 since the announcement, on the AS side. Hell, we hired almost that much in Jan and Feb of this year.