Eight Captain upgrades a month? Do the math.
 

I'm looking on the right hand side of my screen where a Compass ad is flashing. It's saying 18-24 month upgrades to Captain.

OK, the total pilot population at Compass according to APC is currently 663. I imagine there are actually some management pilots above and beyond that and some reservist pilots called up for a tour, but let's look at that 663 and use that for a baseline.

Now I realize that Compass screwed up with the hiring freeze, and they are short on FOs, so let us say that 55% of those 663 are already captains. For simplicity's sake, let us make that 365 Captains and 300 FOs. And since we've already got a class in training and another one booked up, if I were a newbie candidate for Compass I'd be looking at probably another 50 that will be ahead of me on the seniority list before I can seriously expect to get a seniority number.

Now this isn't rocket surgery. Anyone that can be trusted with a weight and balance can do this math.

Now eight upgrades a month is 96 upgrades a year. 350 divided by 96 is 3.64 years, basically three years and eight months for a newbie looking at that ad.

Now I fully realize that there were times in the regionals where a four year upgrade would have been considered totally awesome, but that isn't the case today. Perhaps that's where some of Compass's senior FOs are going, to somewhere they'll at least be made a street captain and can start acquiring TPIC, even if they spend an eternity - or at least a thousand hours TPIC - on reserve. Because, frankly, times have changed, and even senior FOs have options now.

But those new hires have options too, or at least many of them.

Granted, the newbie who can't do long division (or weight and balances) isn't going to be able to figure out that it's not really 18-24 months but rather more like double that, but is that really the guy you want to hire? Seems like that's going to do nothing but drive up your new qual attrition rate, not a good deal for Compass and certainly not a good deal for the guy whose resume is now blighted with a training failure.

Which would leave you with the newbies that woukd sign on KNOWING you were starting out the relationship by lying to them. Man, that doesn't seem like a good deal, no loyalty there either way.

Maybe it's time for management to just man up and admit they screwed the pooch with the hiring freeze and there are GOING to be consequences. Deal with it. If you need retention bonuses to keep your senior FO's or captains from leaving, negotiate for it. If you can't actually expect 18-24 month upgrades, pull the ads.

But starting the relationship with newbies by making promises you have no intention of keeping can only poison the well right at the start. You don't want to do that - trust me on that.

One point. It won't stay eight a month for three and a half years.

There is also FO attrition which reduces time to upgrade.

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I'm sure there is going to be a lot more now.

Absolutely. Will that FO attrition be increased or decreased by slowing the upgrade OPPORTUNITIES of those FOs to upgrade to captain? Is this an effective strategy? Or is it simply going to make those FOs try harder to find a different job that will advance their careers that they can get without Compass TPIC time which apparently many are already doing?

To an extent, this seems like boring a hole in your leaky boat to let the water out. These senior FOs DO HAVE OTHER OPTIONS, even at LCCs and majors. They CERTAINLY have the option to be street captains at any of a number of other regionals. And if you are going to get your butt flown off anyway, why not do it for captain pay?

I think that management knows that it's not a long-term solution. We lose far more than 8 captains/month, so it's definitely not sustainable. However, when you look at who we have on reserve right now, for several days in a row if not weeks at a time, SYSTEMWIDE, not just in one particular base, but in all of them, we have literally 0 FOs on reserve once open time flying is covered. One FO calls out sick? Someone's getting junior manned or a critical pay trip offer is made because there's literally no one to staff it.

In addition, every FO is getting awarded 85+ hour lines each month. That's only happening in SEA on the captain side. LAX and PHX captains are able to (at least the senior ones) get 75 hour lines. And it's been a long time since we've had no captain reserves in LAX. We seem to have about 10 captains on reserve in LAX each day that go unused. To balance out the suck and keep flights going, it'd make sense to have fewer captains coming in than are going out for a bit if we're critically short-staffed on FOs. Thus you see them slowing upgrades a bit so they can have both groups working as much as possible rather than having FOs bear all of the burden. When the new hires in training hit the line faster than we continue losing pilots, that's when we'll have turned the corner (and hopefully that'll come soon). That seems to be the mantra I've heard, and it makes sense to me. (disclaimer, I did not hear the employee call today as I was out flying)

TL;DR The 8 upgrades a month is temporary, not the new normal. Can't upgrade FOs to CA without having new FOs to backfill those positions since planes need both CA and FO to fly.

So we are to assume the brain trust that CREATED this problem with the hiring freeze will lead turn the time to turn the captain spigot back on? And that most all the captain eligible FOs won’t have booked for greener pastures in the interim?

What is there about the history of this boondoggle that gives you such confidence in the wisdom of those people who made these decisions? It seems like the triumph of hope over experience.

To me it seems like they are people who didn’t learn from their first mistake.

Don't forget the Hawaiian flow will alter those numbers a bit

Squirrel!!