I'm a LCA and have never had anyone ask me to encourage senior FOs to upgrade. I even called my chief to see if I'm missing something, nope. No one, in management, is doing that. Might there be a few individual LCAs telling guys to upgrade, sure.

You are kidding yourself that there is a crisis of leadership. Almost without fail the guys who do well in captain upgrade are the junior guys who bid it early. The ones who struggle are the long term wide body FOs who spent the last ten years worried about fish or steak for dinner and paid zero attention to how the captain was running the flight deck. Let them go back to the right seat of a wide body. The younger guys do just fine.

I have heard exactly that from LCA's. And higher. Much higher in mgmt. Your statement of 'let them go back to the right seat' in reference to the junior upgrades, shows that you are the one kidding yourself. Those chickens are coming home to roost anyhow.. it's just a matter of time.

Ok, a buddy of mine is going to SLC next week. Gimme some good, reasonable places to eat. It's been awhile since I've laid over there. Thx

Denny

I agree. Every single FO from a new hire to a 777 FO is qualified to be captain. I hear guys all the time say we cant have new hires going to the captain seat on the E-190. I always think that is funny because most are probably coming to Delta from a captain seat. I am a senior FO, and have flown with very junior captains. Across the board they did a great job.

Very true. Many many new hires over the past few years came in with a PIC type on the 170/190 w/ many years as LCA/ Sim Instructor/ PIC/ SIC, etc... Compass, Republic, JetBlue...

Looks like 321s are going to NYC/DTW.

Let me clarify. First, Xray, sorry if I was a bit harsh. I do appreciate you posting on here as a LCA and making a call, etc... I'm just repeating what I've heard in the widebody community and from some mgmt types.

And to be clear, I'm NOT saying anything bad about JR. Captains. Or anyone. Only that some do regret the lifestyle they've signed up for. It's changed from what it was. The crisis part refers to the future. The retirements are accelerating and the ranks of LCAs and the like will decrease. The E190 situation is the first time that we could see a cockpit crew with less than a year experience at Delta between them. There's no guarantee that former E175 LCAs will be the ones in the left seat. The widebody FO campers are the ones who need to be enticed to choose a career path that benefits not only themselves but the company.

Exactly right.....the only guys that need a little right seat time are the single seat military peeps but thats just a short period to learn the system and 121 ops. Essentially everyone is qualified to be in the left seat here at Delta. If senior management really cared, they would have squashed regional outsourcing long ago.

I would agree many wide body FOs bid narrow body captain and reqret it.....for lifestyle reasons. And please don't misunderstand what I am saying. I think the current 190 rate is way too low and needs to be addressed. That said....wide body FO is a pretty good lifestyle and I am not sure any pay raise will fix the issue of guys camping out there! And I don't think we are anywhere near a crisis in terms of qualified pilots to fly captain. Top to bottom we have a very good pilot group.

We heard the same thing back in '07. "We can't have newhires going straight into the right seat of the ER. That would be madness." Meanwhile ACMI outfits had been doing this for decades.