Got it, thanks!

Ran into AK at lunch yesterday. He said the are ramping up more hiring than previously thought, after the increase to 600 this year. AE came out today with vacancies on most aircraft. It is a good vibe in the traing world. I have already had 2 capt pick up the tab for our group of new hires. Very cool.

Did AK say anything about increased training capacity/classes? It's already a 6-9 month swim in the pool. Without increased training, increased hiring just fills a larger pool. Either way, it's great news to hear the pipeline continues to grow!

By hiring I think he means sitting in class . You're not hired until that first day in the training center. Prior to that you have a job offer only. The last bid is going to require more pilots on the property.

Q for you guys who are smart on how this stuff works - the AE is put out for bids, and whatever is not filled that way results in a drop for new hire classes? Looks like a lot of seats needing to be filled, and wondering how much of that will be internal and how much of that might accelerate the new hire training pace. Apologies - a lot of this is still Mandarin Chinese to me. It just seems like this last AE generated a bit of excitement.

Every position must be offered via the AE process before a new hire can be offered that seat. AE bids often overlap so it can be hard to know exactly what seats are available but in general what you say is correct. With a new hire however the company does not have to give them a choice of all unbidden seats. They can and will offer the seats they want filled relative to the capacity of the various training pipelines. They may have open seats on multiple aircraft types but if they need bodies in the MD88 pipeline that week the drop could be all 88's.

Pretty much Walli. Current DAL Pilots can bid on the openings and whatever slots remain unbid will be filled by new hires. Secondary vacancies also get created during these AE's so it's likely that there will be additional positions available to new hires that aren't shown on the posted AE. For example, there are no MSP 320B openings on the AE but lets say that a few MSP 320B's get awarded new positions and no current pilots bid into those vacated slots. Then new hires will get MSP 320B even though they weren't advertised as open on the AE.

Great, thanks for that. Relative to what we see in the current hiring/training pace, is it your sense then that they're on glideslope or it points to an increase even beyond the 600/yr? Probably tough to tell?

I think they will hire more. Probably not a lot more but 60 to 70 a month may happen.

Thanks gents. Feels like a good time to be joining the team!

Walli