Question from a UAL guy. Upgrades?
 

Seems long ago someone told me AA has some policy regarding bypassing upgrade. At UAL our last vacancy bid that ended a week or so ago had 95 unfilled captain slots. Not sure how the company intends to incentivize junior pilots to bid what they don't want to bid. Does AA have a policy forcing upgrades after a certain time or did I get a bad rumor years ago? Has AA had any unfilled captain slots?

Thanks.

Believe that went away a long time ago. SWA still has it don’t they? Lots of senior FO’s chasing QOL especially in widebody.

Nope. That went away a few contracts ago. We have some uber-senior FO's who can have a comparable seniority as captains but don't want to upgrade.

We were forcing 190 upgrades a few years ago.

Yeah, we absolutely can force upgrade people

Its forced in reverse seniority order in that specific base. Regardless of aircraft too I believe. So if you’re the most junior CLT A320 FO who is off probation and a CLT 737 CA vacancy went unfilled, you’re up!

Upgrade vacancies here don’t go unfilled because reserve is a pretty sweet gig for the most part. It happened on the E190 but that’s because no one wanted to be a Group 1 CA in PHL. Maybe we’ll see that again in LGA one day if people don’t want to commute but I doubt it.

If reserve is good, doesn't it go senior?

It does in a lot of statuses like widebody. Always going non current on landings and play the game getting lost in the system. Lots of time off.

I don’t know if I would say that it goes senior, but if a pilot lives in base, it’s not uncommon to hear that they bid reserve. Especially during vacation months.

AA had a PHX A320 CA bid back to A320 FO on the Dec bid. Will be interesting to see if he gets withheld in the CA seat if he would be paid FO rate. If withheld as FO awaiting CA he would get CA pay.