duece12345

Yes. Weird as hell. But I hear he is a nice guy.

cni187

Guess that's why he says they're only rumors from top men now and they're less accurate.

caddis

How does it extend training freezes? Your freeze starts on the award date not training complete date. If anything it could cost more training. I know guys going to short courses who’s training freeze was up about the time they finished training.

TED74

If your freeze expires Jan 1st and there's not an AE until April, you're effectively frozen that extra 3 months. Or if said April AE doesn't backfill that category you want, it could be a 6 or 9 month extension waiting for an AE that posts or backfills the category you're trying to move to. The greater the interval between AEs, the more the company saves on training. And as far as I know, the 2-year new hire freeze we just gave them in the last contract is already the most restrictive in the industry.

forgot to bid

Well it keeps people from being able to move, like a extended freeze.

GivemeVSP

He’s had nothing since his BFF retired. Now its whispers of a conversion list being published...LOL.

marcal

There are a lot of ways to artificially extend a seat lock. If you are awarded a bid Jan 1, your lock is up Jan 1, two years later. You then need to wait for an AE where you are senior enough to bid for what you want and then wait for training which could be as much as six months later, or even 12 months later if its a displacement bid(which will come with the MSP and ATL MD88 flying in the next few years). Crew resources I guarantee is looking at strategic timing of the displacement bids to delay training events with these bids. I would if I were in there shoes.

Just as an example, lets say you had a seat lock that expired last June. Let's say you were waiting for the seat lock to expire to bid 320A in NYC. Well one month earlier, was the last AE that awarded ANY 320A's in NYC. So you've now been sitting about a year past your seat lock expiration waiting on an AE to come that will award 320A's that hopefully you are senior enough to hold! Combined with waiting for training, you could be looking at much, much longer than two years to move. Unless you are planning on bidding to a narrow body right seat, my guess is seat locks will be much longer than two years.

sailingfun

I can guarantee you crew planning does not look at any of that. They look at the seats they need filled and the availability of training slots. What you suggest would be almost impossible to manage given our bid system.
For every pilot who has a seat lock extended by a long bid another pilot as others have posted has his seat lock shortened.

BigHitterLlama

How frequent did the vacancy bids at NW happen? Is it worth asking for quarterly AE’s in the next contract? Sometimes it seems like CR’s completely blank canvas on when to post an AE hurts them - like a teenager with all weekend to do their homework that ends up writing a 15 page paper on Sunday at 11pm... JAT.

sailingfun

NWA had monthly bids. They also were a virtually static airline with 4 bases, 5000 pilots and slow fleet changes. Totally different situation than Delta today.