Prepare Yourselves... 2021 AEs
 

Cryptic and not so cryptic messaging from Flight Ops in numerous recent updates hint at a rapid reversal of fortune and max training is on the horizon. New hires are even on the table. With so many early retirements we might see the return of breathtaking movement. Keep your fingers crossed!

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Unless we have super bad thunderstorms or it’s a leap year...

source? I haven’t seen anything like that communicated.....

Check the January Pilot Training and Standards update

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I read something along those lines on several Workplace Flight Standards group threads.

Yet meltdown during annual holiday travel, let’s hope we can get our act together.

We're not handling the current training load, presumably because we are already at max training. What are the current NQAT numbers? The only way the company can handle movement is with cancelled awards and/or pilots returning to previous seats. Some of those previous Base/Equipment/Seat options don't exist. I predict we will be working our way out of a self-imposed training disaster for another 12-18 months. Upcoming AEs will get massaged beyond belief to award short courses and normal requals while avoiding IQ.

Please bring on the AEs though.

Well we need to turn to our crack meteorologist now that hes stopped trying to be management and he's showing his face around again.

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I can’t find this group on workspace....

What’s AE?

Advance Entitlement. I don’t know where the term comes from. It’s our bid for base, aircraft, and seat (Left or right).

Thank you!

There’s my Pangloss! The old Trip7 is back baby!:D

Actually, I’ve had kind of a crappy day so bring on the rainbows. I’m skeptical as heck that new hires will be seen in the next year at least but it’s nice to have a little optimism.

What happened to mgmts stance that they must have concessions or they would be forced to fulough? Some people actually believed them when they were saying this..lol

That was before any hand-outs from Uncle Sugar (to be fair it was the ridiculous government lockdowns that were a huge part of this industry going into free fall).

We have been uniquely insulated from this economically crushing pandemic. To see a more real world example of economics in action, look no further than 9/11. We had hired all the way up to the summer of 2001, stopped hiring late summer, the tragic events of 9/11 happened, and we furloughed as soon as November. Those guys didn't return for over five years, and that was repeated throughout the industry.

Absent all the CARES Act $$ we would have thousands furloughed, as would every pax carrier.

To paraphrase your own question, "does anyone really believe that absent money from the feds, we WOULDN'T have tons of pilots on the street?"

Sorry but I read the newsletter and did not see anything foreshadowing any type of maximum training. This the the best line I found:

”we’re gearing up to serve the pilots. Training capability will be the driver of our recovery: We are removing training constraints where we can.”

The rest just mentions reorganization of fleet chiefs and the new flap extension procedure.

Delta cannot even staff the planes now with no furloughs..If they had furloughed, I can't even imagine how many more flights would have canceled due to no crew. So yes, I think the threat of a furlough was all for show. They were trying to get concessions knowing no furloughs were really coming.

My head is still spinning from all the acronyms they used...

No kidding I think they have a department solely for acronym development

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Still expecting an AE in the 3-400 pilot range in the next 3 weeks. Some training opens up in March and I would imagine they want some Affected pilots trained up by summer.

It's a huge confusing mess. Absent money from the feds, would we be flying the schedule we are? No company survives long running a money-losing operation, and we are still cash burn negative to this day, just not as bad as last spring. And even if mgmt had done the right thing and had conducted all the fleet groundings, VEOPs, displacements etc in the correct order (i.e. *NOT* trying to keep the FA union off the property), we'd still have a bunch of surplus pilots, just not in the bizarre way they are staffed now.

But there's so many "but consider this, and also that...." that no one (either of us included) can really make a firm statement. In fact, absent money from the feds I wonder if any domestic airlines would be flying at all right now.

I don’t see it being too much different unless they furloughed the full 2558 original WARN recipients. A large number went out on UNA in July, August, and September as it was. The biggest difference would have been on the A220 where eventual “affected” pilots got twisted around until the end of November.

Q4 earnings report on Thursday Jan 14 (tomorrow). That should provide insight into current cash burn. I believe the original target was to be "neutral" by winter; pretty sure that wasn't achievable.

Going to take at least 4-6 months for 90% vaccinations, and that's just in the US. That'll be at the end of the summer flying season.

Love the idea of full recalls and hiring new pilots; I'll settle for a viable business model that sees us intact through 2022, hopefully without bailouts being needed.

fully agree. I saw nothing in there indicating we're ready to ramp up to full capacity bring everyone back hire off the street. It's almost like they are admitting they were vastly understaffed in the years pre-Covid and are getting a team in place for WHEN we ramp up, whenever that will be

True, but between the early outs and UNAs we have as many Pilots not flying as DAL would have furloughed. The difference between this situation and previous thrill rides along our aviation career is that no Pilots were furloughed. A similar number of Pilots were taken off the line through the above mentioned programs.

UCAL with a much more comprehensive deal on the UNA side has all/most of there junior Pilots available and producing. Our management team either dropped the ball planning wise or had conflicting priorities which precluded a more operationally productive and flexible arrangement.

Absent the government money we would probably be in a similar situation manning wise but with zero VEOPs and UNAs and thousands of furloughs.

Scoop

Yes 20-04 putting affected pilots onto sometime similar to 20-03 no fly lines, but qualifying them to at least be able to pick up would have made sense. Could have helped when schedule crunches happen.

Except you glossed over this: At a minimum, that indicates they expect Affected Pilots will start to be recalled soon, some maybe for summer ‘21. Agree OTS hires are probably a year away best case though.

I too was surprised the company didn’t want any currency/“obligation” out of the affected pilots at all.

#240SUX

Thanks for the point out Trip.

Hope we get some back soon, although I'm still months away on training for my displacement from last May's displacement. Doubtful we can get very many ready anytime soon. Have a feeling it's going to be green sleep mania this summer.

How do we unwind this mess? We have pilots who haven't gone to training because of limited capacity and we are about to create more training events. For pilots with multiple awards, it seems that converting them without training for the middle awards, while training them on the final award makes the most sense.

I would agree with you GS hypothesis.

Not your "sleep" though :D

Hate autocorrect as well.

Delta does like to use odd terminology

Delta

Delta -AE : Advanced Entitlement =

*position notice

delta - A : B

*CA FO

Delta - Rotation

*trip

Delta - Drop

*available AC in in Indoc


Delta vacation : primary secondary tertiary quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary

*week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

there are more before my time etc and

bow wave

Green/White/Yellow Slip for the colors they physically used to be...

Good question, there has to be more flexible options out there for the company, FAA & ALPA to pursue. Too many stories of training on something when you're about to displaced from, going to CQ the week before starting on a new bird, etc.

Oops! There shall be plenty of slipping and no sleeping this summer for everyone :D

The training department has already been at max capacity for several months now on multiple fleets. A significant amount of resources was spent on folks that have reinstatement rights, particularly those displaced off the non closed ER bases. Either a bigger picture we are missing or an incredible waste of resources.

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Im going to go with...an incredible waste of resources for $800, Alex.

i can assure you, we are nowhere close to our max training load. Plenty of sim time open every day.

on the ER, we have sim time outside of E/F periods available every day

What about instructors? I've emailed the training planners and I get blank looks, virtually of course.