Junior lineholders
 

This is for May, and includes CMP lines:

DFW 145 FO: 03/2018
DFW 175 FO: 01/2019
ORD 145 FO: 11/2018
ORD 175 FO: 09/2018
MIA 145 FO: 07/2018
LGA 145 FO: 03/2018

Doesn’t Envoy fly the CRJ in ORD as well? Got info on that?

10/2017. Dying fleet so anyone hired right now, the answer is: Never.

I'm honestly foncused about what drives this disparity. Just to make sure I understand, this implies that those 03/2018 folks have been on reserve up to this point? Why did Envoy overstaff the 145 to this degree? Was there some expectation of growth that did not materialize? (yet?)

It is a complex situation with many moving parts. The growth has been on the 175. So, those FO's tended to fly more and upgrade faster than on the 145. This causes vacancies and consistent upward movement and relatively short reserve times.

The 145 bases have seen a lot of expansion and contraction in their flying and staffing. LGA used to be the fastest place to get a line as everybody wanted to transfer out. Now those lines have shrunk and we have enough people who want NY.

There was a backlog of 145 FOs for a while, with >100 on the reserve list in ORD alone. It has taken the typical 145 FO over 2 years to get the time to upgrade. Longer if the wanted to transfer to DFW, shorter if they got lines elsewhere.

Envoy keeps big reserve lists and is overstaffed because they want to keep the training pipeline full. The steady flow of people out has caused local staffing disruptions (such as on the CRJ when half the CAs flowed to AA in a couple months, or the shortage of qualified CAs forcing Envoy to hire DECs) and Envoy is just trying to have warm bodies on hand to fill the jets. The pipeline is full of cadets and RTP pilots, so Envoy will keep putting them in class.

Envoy awards 175 and CRJ to fill operational needs then puts surplus FOs on the 145 instead of spreading them around. They may be doing this because they have a lot of extra training infrastructure for the 145 that they don’t want to go idle, or because they want to keep the 175 artificially junior so cadets report back to their CFI bros that life is good.

These may play a part but also that we are getting new planes almost monthly, so it is easy to go junior on a growing fleet.

Even before the all the fleet growth they kept reserve short for 175 FOs. For people hired early last year it was 2-3 months vs. 12-18.

Training and Reserve Timeline
 

I'm trying to make go/no-go decisions on who to interview with and I'm looking for some info on training dates and reserve. How quickly are guys getting training dates after hiring and what are reserve times looking like at junior bases?

If you get the 145 (you will) you'll be on reserve for 12-18 months.

Envoy is not the place to go right now.