On a typical new hire class what is the typical breakdown, military, endeavor, express jet, compass, horizon, republic and other off the street (flag carriers vs other airline and corporate sectors)?

 

It varies pretty widely. Some classes have just a handful of military while others it's over 50%. In that mix you will have ex-mil guys who flew at a regional for some period of time. Most others come from regionals. I think the Endeavor SSP pilots are all grouped into one class at the end of the month. It seems like there are a decent number of expressjet guys getting on, but other than that it's really randomized among all the other regionals. I will say that I haven't really heard of very many pilots coming from Mesa or GoJets for whatever reason. I'm sure there are pilots here that came from there but I just haven't heard about it. Some classes will have a couple of LCC pilots or the one-off foreign carrier pilot, but those numbers overall seem to be pretty low. Same with corporate pilots with no 121 background, there are some that get one but from what I can tell it's in low numbers.

 

In any rolling 12 month look back, 35% of new hire pilots will come from DL connection carriers represented by ALPA.

- PWA section 1-D.10

 

Just for perspective, the Endeavor pilots alone make up for the majority of the minimum to meet that section with their required movement.

 

It’s 180 a year max going forward. I’m sure this year it will be a lot lower than that since the SSP died in May after sending about 70.

 

They're supposed to still have the average limit for the year so they should end up pretty close to that is my understanding. I thought there were still a few SSPs left to go though.

 

Can UAL/AAL/LUV do the same?

 

Maybe, however it seems (some of) the lessons from the recent past have been completely lost on the B-School/analcyst crowd. Higher fuel doesn't always equal the end of hiring or growth. In fact, super cheap fuel, which is great for a while, eventually guarantees a mass influx of ponzi scheme start ups and irresponsible growth across the board. A lot of bacon was saved in the not too distant past by higher fuel costs which significantly narrow the gap between the cut throat ULCC's and the legacies (and even the regular LCC's) above them.

Bye bye Skybus was just one example. If oil was stuck in the uber cheap 30's they'd probably still be around with 100-300 more plane's worth of capacity barfed all over the system, and the higher paying airlines would likely have yielded to them. Even among legacies, higher fuel helps reign in knee jerk ASM growth. Periodic spikes are actually very beneficial all around.

 

The concept above is correct however it applies to overall profit margin not fuel prices. I posted on here several years ago that we would never see 30% profit sharing checks because the profit margin to generate that check would be so high that capacity would quickly flow into the markets driving profits back down. The forum quickly told me 30% was a lock.
Higher fuel prices certainly drive profit margin down since airlines normally can’t recover more than a portion of the increase by raising fares and tie into the the margin discussion.
Sky bus is a poor example. They had no capital from the day they started. Take a look a JetBlue, Allegiant, Spirit and Frontier. Look at their size then and now. Check out their order book also.
In the end however pilot hiring over the last 30 years has been closely tied to fuel prices. Sharp prices increases curtailed hiring.

 

They will curtail expansion however I suspect we would see a greater reduction at Delta because we have a large number of older aircraft that are paid for. It’s much easier to park a airframe with no monthly cost verses one with a 3 million dollar a month lease.