No. It's within 500#s; last I looked. Not sure, LGA or MIA, but its not far off at all.

 

yea if you’re looking to get first upgrade, it’s about 1 vacancy worse case 2 between 73 and 320

 

I don't believe premium will be coming back to anything close to level seen prior to this year. It will actually get worse.

we have a lot of factors that drive down our premium opportunities. And downward drivers are coming. Here are some of these things I'm speaking of,

Reassignments are often preferred over offering premium because reassigning a pilot means they only pay 50% of the limited flights that are considered AF (reassignment) flying. There is nonsoft pay being paid as premium

IMAX encourages pilots to want straight time (not premium) over PM trips, when they are in the middle of an imax run.

Zero Time Lines grant some pilots lines with 0 hours guarantee. The company is learning to loce this, because many of these pilots are able to gobble up large chunks of the already limited open time available. Now you are left with extremely high reserve levels covers 0 open trips, even in large bid statuses. They have more than enough reserves to cover even bad-weather days too. Not sure why the union loves these zero time lines. It benefits very few pilots, but it is at the expense of every other pilot who have higher forced line values and less premium trips.

Like I said, it will get worse too...

The new reserve system that is being programmed will be even more efficient for AA, resulting in less premium offerings, since the reserves will cover more of the already limited open time.

The new RO assignment rules will allow pilots in RO to cover a whole lot more flying hours from open time. This will be the biggest killer of premium time.

This why APAs strategy for negotiating variable premium and selling it to our pilots as a win....was insulting. It should have been obvious since United airlines was trying to (and successfully did) move to a system that offers more guaranteed premium opportunities at higher than 150%. Delta and United have it much better. We are last in this category, like most of our contract.

 

I posted back in Oct '23 that premium was mostly done for moving forward but people didn't believe me. I agree, except for irrops and weather it's mostly done.

That being said I would've never expected someone to complain about having no more premium and actually being properly staffed after the 2021-2023 days.

Reassignments are way down, reliability is up, mechanical issues (knock on wood) have been minimal with maintenance quickly responding to issues. Food choices are improving. Jetblue is now distracted from making any sort of long term moves as it figures out wtf it's going to try and do. In general it feels like employees are happy to be here and that's translating to nicer treatment of customers.

FAs need a contract but the company has their line in the sand and it's sticking to it. Every day they delay, they lose money. Hopefully they see this. So far this doesn't seem to be impacting CS.

Personally I'm optimistic for the future.

 

Premium is a function of flying/manning.

You can either have under an understaffed airline with lots of premium, or a properly staffed (or overstated) airline which gives other advantages to pilots. Better deals and less flying for senior reserve bidders and more trip trade and drop flexibility come with the latter. We are seeing a cycle of more balanced staffing right now, especially in comparison to 21/22.

The functions you mention will definitely play a part in affecting premium opportunities, but by far the biggest factor will be how much the airline decides to grow the flight schedule moving forward. The dynamics of the last 2 years was never going to last.

 

This is interesting to see. I assume these are the legacy AA seniority dates.

At UA:

Junior 787 CAP
4700 hired 5/98ua 9/05co

Junior 777 CAP

5600 hired 3/99ua 11/06co

Junior 767 CAP

12400 hired 1/22

All SFO.

Any other poisition available(for now) in the 1st year.

 

Those aren’t the most junior at the company, just the most junior from that particular vacancy bid.

 

I agree. At this point we’re getting more and more towards being properly staffed which is why we have less and less open time and premium.

The real issue is that has NOT translated into being able to trip trade and drop being easier. The lack of open time and the limits placed on TTS makes it difficult to improve your schedule.

 

Yes Voter here. Lots $$$ given and dont have to chase PM.

 

Exactly. So we are better staffed, clearly. Or, we have a reduced schedule, or both. None of this has translated into lower reserve levels and thus more lineholders with lower-hour line-awards. And like you said, even with the high reserves and little need for premium, we still have not received any benefit in the form of better trip trade flexibility, etc.