Hiring Freeze until Fall 2018?
 

So a friend of mine, who is in the October new hire class, said MG came into class today and told them there will be no hiring until next fall. They are going all in until the transition is complete 😳 Wow. Glad they got hired last month. Hopefully it isn’t until fall, but that is what was just told to them.

I blame ecam

This always happens right before a merger or bankruptcy

If this is indeed what happens, I think it’s safe to say it isn’t bankruptcy. It makes some sense. Having decided to be all Bus by June is absolutely a terrific move and one that needs to happen. It is going to take a lot out of the training dept to pull it off. Your not only dealing with transitions, but all the people doing recurrents as well.

& to add to the above Feb class has been cancelled.

Is it safe to welcome sun country to the allegiant family yet?

Sure we shouldn't welcome Frontier or United?

If this is true I would venture to guess that part of the deal was to have all the Md-80's off the balance sheet by a certain (sooner) date and to cease hiring so there's fewer pilots to integrate into the larger system. There seems to have been a sudden shift in their course in the last few months, "hiring from now until forever" was the plan. Md-80's gone late 2019 but now abruptly moved up. New-hire classes suddenly cancelled with no advance warning and no email to the pilot group. Growth plans stunted, i.e. no 2nd OAK plane despite having 14 crews for the base. Strange LAS displacement bid. Lots of odd happenings around here, could be legit but it could be a buyout.

I believe the OP said no hiring till next fall. So that would make sense that they cancelled these classes.

Merger scenarios:

1. Sun country
2. Frontier
3. Just about anyone else
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1,000,000. United.

"So you're saying there's a chance!"

UA would make more sense than F9.

Not Bankruptcy or a Merger
 

This has nothing to do with Bankruptcy or Merging or anything of the sort. It's all about Aircraft availability, we aren't going to hire more Pilots until we obtain more aircraft. If we come into some more Airbus, hiring will pick up again. It's a very fluid process.

Makes sense...
 

Why would Allegiant hire more pilots than what they already have?

Per 3Q 2017 press release:

Allegiant Travel Company - News Release

(Table didnt copy well)

Aircraft fleet plan by end of period

Aircraft - (seats per AC) 3Q17 YE17 1Q18 2Q18 3Q18 YE18
MD-80 (166 seats) 40 37 35 29 20 —
757 (215 seats) 2 — — — — —
A319 (156 seats) 21 22 25 31 31 32
A320 (177/186 seats) 26 29 34 42 45 50
Total 89 88 94 102 96 82
Aircraft listed in table above include only in-service aircraft, planned retirements and future aircraft under contract (subject to change)

Allegiant currently has 89 planes and plans to have 82 by the end of 2018 after the 80s are gone. A net DECREASE of 7 planes. 4 crews per plane makes them overstaffed of about 60 pilots. What am I missing here?

Attrition? Retirements?

I believe that the Airbus has been staffed a lot closer to 6 crews per airplane due to the fact that they are being operated with more block hours per day. I don’t think we are overstaffed.


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I really don't think we are overstaffed either (especially looking at open time the last couple of months). However, if we were 60 pilots heavy, that would be about 20 months worth of attrition for anyone senior to me. Three a month (average) over the last year.

How are we going to staff all of these new routes that are going to be announced "tomorrow" without hiring anyone?

Not overstaffed now, overstaffed at the end of 2018. Allegiant has 89 planes now, 82 at the end of 2018. And if you are using 6 crews per plane from the previous poster, that makes it approximately 80 pilots extra at the END of 2018.

How many sim/ground instructors and other pilots in the management system do we have? Cause you have to count those too, they are in the seniority list and they barely fly

We currently have 890 pilots on the seniority list. 6 crews per airplane for 82 airplanes is 984 pilots. The 890 pilots on the list includes pilots on medical leave, the instructor core, and management pilots. So, again I️ don’t think we are going to be overstaffed anytime in 2018. I️ think we still need to be hiring, we just don’t have the sim capacity for transition training and new hire training to both happen until we get the bulk of the MD80 pilots transitioned.


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You mean 80 pilots light? 12 X 82 = 984. We're not even at 900 pilots now and that includes the 300 management pilots.

They talked about this on the wall street quarterly earnings call. Although airframe count is down, utilization on the airbus is higher than the 80 so the net seat miles flow will still grow slightly year over year.

This hiring freeze has more to do with sim availability and increased utilization of crews now that we have a single fleet type.

Has there been any official announcement? Any date mentioned that they'll resume hiring?

how many has allegiant hired so far this year?

126 since Jan 2017. New hire class starting tomorrow and another one in December, not sure about the size. I guess 8-10 each?

I guess no one has looked at the projected 2018 headcount that was just posted....looks very good for future growth. I can understand a class or two being delayed but for the sole purpose of accommodating MD80 pilots into the training pipeline to transition.

Just looked at it. It seems to indicate a +150ish total increase from January to July 2018 (not including mgmt pilots). Hmmmm...

Does anyone feel that there will be a new hire class sometime in the first half of 2018?

Let me shake my magic 8 ball. Swish swish swish. Ask again later. D'oh.

After seeing the projected headcount, I’d say absolutely. I have heard Jan/Feb classes might get pushed though, however, that’s right about when the SFB training center should open....that should lighten the load on the training dept significantly.

Just recieved an email from Aero Crew Solutions. Their first ever virtual job fair is on Nov 17th and Allegiant has withdrawn from it.


Allegiant Air has informed us that they will not be attending the virtual pilot job fair on Friday. The company has accelerated the retirement of the MD-80 aircraft and decided to hault hiring until next year. The recruiting team wanted to say they are sorry for the last minute cancellation.

A hiring freeze for 1 year and an increased headcount? Adds up to only 1 thing in my opinion

“Until next year”.....as in 1.5 months from now....lol.

This is a SIM time issue thats it! Lets stop making more than it is.

Closer the truth, this is...AB sim was going to be unusable at some point in the near future. Really not happy about the possibility of Miami training and crappy hotels...one of the few things that gets done properly in LAS. Hotels for long term training that is.

The hiring freeze is due to aircraft availability. We are also sitting with close to 10 Pilots per A/C and we are trying to take this number down. This will be more efficient when the Transition is complete

No, it's not due to aircraft availability. Please, people... stop making stuff up! This is ONLY due to sim availablitly and will not be for long.

The current plan is to hire 45+ per month starting with a June class. This will change 1000 times and there will be classes in early 18.

😮😃😂

You said 45/month... that's awesome! Pretty sure that you shouldn't be smoking that though...


I see what you did there.

Utilizing the Toulouse and Beijing Sims is what I hear

They'll have to for all the new routes

🇨🇦

I just heard from someone who was in a class that EG came into and said we are fully staffed through 2019. They want 6 crews per plane. We are at 10. No hiring for the forsee able future. They boned up hiring to prepare for the transition bubble and will let attritian even things out. Sorry to burst your bubble. Basic economics. Nothing to see here.