JungleBus

Same here, 32. Bout 10k hours. Not atypical for people our age. Would guess we'll see people in our age/hours range hired off street.

fisherpilot

Have any corp guys been hired yet? If so im curious what quals they had and how many internal recs.

dtfl

How about you shut your man pleaser and mind your non-Delta bizness

Waggs

I'm happy to hear about younger guys getting hired. I'd initially thought the younger, the better considering if it were me, I'd want to move a known retirement date further away. If you hire a 45-50 year old, you're adding to the already known number of retirements coming due in 15-20 years.

However, in completely anecdotal terms, the majority, if not all of the folks I know to get hired at a major in the last year have been 40ish-mid 50s. That had me thinking companies might have been concerned about having to pay a person top-level captain pay for the last tens years past when an older hire would have already retired. I guess I just need to meet more people!

sailingfun

Pay scales max at 12 years. They will pay whoever is in those seats the same for the most part regardless of hire age.

Waggs

So if they hire someone at 45, they'll pay them the top of the scale for 8 years, if they decide/are able to upgrade. A 30 year old hire will be paid the top level for 23 years.

Overall, it's probably not even one of their considerations, it just seems like a 30 year old hire incurs much larger future labor costs than an older hire. There are certainly pros and cons to hiring both types of people and this is just one aspect of the decision. I'm sure they want a wide spread of people and backgrounds.

Timbo

They are going to run into a huge clump of retirements in about 7-8 years, because Delta and North West went on a huge hiring spree from 1985-1990, and most of the guys they hired were close to the same age, plus or minus 5 years, and that average age was 28, going up about 1 year every year from 1985-1990.

The older guys in that group are coming up on 65 in a couple years, but the real big retirement bubble is going to happen in about 8 years when over 50% of those guys hit 65.

Timbo

There will be more turnover in the lower pay scales if they have new hires with less than 12 years to age 65, no doubt. I'm sure the bean counters have run the numbers to see if it's cheaper to hire younger guys and keep them 35 years or hire older guys (age 53?) and constantly be running a new hire program to replace them.

If the company could hire nothing but age 60 pilots and turn them over every 5 years, I'm sure they'd LOVE that! Nobody would ever get to year 12 pay rates!

maddogmax

How times have changed. When I got out of the Navy in '81 no major would hire me because I was over 30. Now it seems like they won't hire you unless your 40!

Timbo

Yeah, I witnessed the same thing in 1985, and 20-20 vision uncorrected, etc. The oldest guy in my new hire class was 34 and we thought he was a geezer!

In fact, my step dad was turned down at all the majors in the 1970's because he was 40, but later there was an old age discrimination suit filed against North West, and he was hired there and retired there 17 years later.

Remember back in the 1970's-1980's the commitment to the military was only 4 years, so guys would go in at age 21-22, come out at age 25-26 and get hired at the airlines.

Today the commitment is what, 10 years? So a guy coming out would be 32ish...but most guys are staying in to get 20+ years, so they are in their 40's coming out. They can put in 20+ years in the military and still put in 20+ years at an airline...if it lasts that long.