A couple of buddies have completed the in-person interview and have class dates in August... Looks like the wheel is actually turning again.

Rumor on the street is that the phone interviews are going away (or have gone away) and candidates will go straight to Vegas for the in-person interview.

 

And according to our FB gurus, now we are hiring 220-250 pilots between now and February. That's 25% growth between now and the end of Q12020.

 

Still doing phone interviews, no video interview or ftd.

 

Come on now... Every day since the official announcement we add 50?

 

250 pilots in the next 7 months? That's more than they hired the last 2 years we were hiring. I'm calling BS.

If the news management had was that huge they'd have had to update their 10k. There's no way they could keep such a huge expansion under wraps. We'd have heard something directly from them by now. Rumors that begin with "my buddy said" are always the least credible. I wonder if Maury is doing a pump and dump scheme with all this buzz to boost the stock price then retire. Now that would explain all of these rumors. Otherwise where are we going to stick 25 new airplanes? Florida is full. IWA is full. LAS is full. The small bases could maybe fly 1 more jet each. The 2-3 new bases (JQF BLV and maybe LCK or MEM) also rumored next year would be 2-3 jets each. That's still a bunch of jets without ramps to park them on.

One has to wonder what kind of quality we are going to get too. We are late to the hiring game, and pay less than the other LCCs. The sleep in your own bed every night thing isn't going to get people here for less money because it's gotten out that the company likes to TDY people out of their base for months or stick them in bases far from their homes and not open up spots in the desirable bases they want to be in. Their defecation on our contract has spread industry wide too. We will probably get a bunch of resume builders waiting for the big 4 to call or washed up disgruntled regional lifers that couldn't get hired anywhere else. I see the bottom half of our seniority list becoming a revolving door. If management was smart they would find a way to get the top half of the list to move on to other airlines. That would save them a lot of money. But then maybe thats why they have cracked down on us the last couple of years.

 

If this is in fact true, is it possible that this pilot growth is due to an increase in current aircraft utilization via multi day trips and red eyes on the horizon rather than strictly aircraft growth? Pure speculation on my part.

 

On top of that the attrition is picking up quite a bit. Not just from the bottom of the seniority list.

 

I hope that they would look at guys not wanting to go to the big 4 / regional lifers. Guys like me have been waiting for 2 years now to have a shot, along with a lot of other great guys / gals. It’s all a crap shoot I guess. Getting really tired of the 91 lifestyle and no “schedule”.

DH

 

I haven't heard about this 25 plane rumor but the SFB airport expansion will be done next year, PGD has room for a few more, a few of the oldest in the fleet will be replaced, some 2 day overnights will make room for a few planes, could use another 2 spares and 4-6 new bases in the next 2 years is plausible. Also, block hours have increase by 20% from last year in the peak months and that will continue to increase next year. The deal (if any) could not be 100% complete which is why nothing has been released yet. My guess would be a chunk of the Virgin/Alaska 319/320's coming off lease. Even if the 250/7 months is just a made up rumor, the 100+ pilots in the next few months is still 12% growth to the list. We can all look forward to that and anything extra is just icing on the cake.

 

This is spot on. Also would love to see another plane for BLI. Mexico flying could be used to outstation a few planes at night. PIT-CUN-SAT, quick overnight and reverse in the morning, something like that.