I am not lying. The information may not be correct, but those are the words that came out of the system chief pilots mouth on Tuesday during the LAX base visit. I wasn't sure I heard him correctly the first time, so I had him repeat it.

 

If true, I'm not sure if it would be a good thing for newbie coming in with 0 121 time. By the time newbie gets 1000, all rapid upgrade might be over with many bypassing, no?

 

The growth is still good for a new hire. The law in the us requires 1000 sic. It's a minimum and a good one. You don't know what you don't know.

There's nothing wrong with being over half way up the list at a decent place with no 50 seaters when you're FINALLY legal to upgrade in about 2 years.

There is currently good movement and few lifers. Don't trust your crystal ball much further than that.

 

The company can analyze the bid preferences through FLiCA. If they are going to release a multi class vacancy for upgrades, they can preview how it'll look. They'll be able to see about how many crews they'll be able to get voluntary into SEA, how junior upgrade will go, ETC. So it's very plausible that the CP knows exactly how junior it's going to go. They would be stupid not to be looking at this info.
Upgrade going very junior or even going to the street is a huge win for recruiting. If the next vacancy is a large one, encompassing all the upgrade classes for June, we may see new hires awarded captain. Remember, they said they wanted to upgrade 8 per week: 5 Tuesday's in June = 40 upgrades for June. Upgrade is currently 3 away from 11/2014 hires. 40 could most definitely take us into pilots who are still in training.

 

Pilots hired in NOV 2014 are holding CA in June. They have been flying the line since February. The July bid will see pilots still in training holding CA. I've said before that pilots in training/street captains will hold it for the late summer early fall bids, I guess some are still all surprised

 

How does pbs work? You just piecemeal your own schedule out of pairings they create?

 

Preferential Bidding System

 

If you're senior then you can try that. Basically you put in your preferences, and there are many options to pick from and then the system awards schedules in seniority order trying to fullfil your preferences. Things like days off, start/end times, layover cities, etc.

 

Any idea when the quarterly seniority list is coming out?

 

They have a couple weeks left to get it out.