I don’t think they care about attrition.

 

F no, they don't care about it. To the brainiacs in ATL it's full pay to the last day, and then either a golden parachute or guaranteed job at UAL (they'd be the perfect fit, since planning isn't their strong suit up in Chicago)!

 

“You have to look to see the good things here.”

Like knowing months in advance about a “profit sharing”/bonus check and still F’n up the taxes for it.

 

Got a call from a recruiter who said 25% of UAL’s new hires have to come from XJT and that UAL hired 600 XJT Pilots last year; is this true? He said upgrade times were about 3 years and it was about 5 years to UAL at EWR (jr base), assuming the interviews, Hogan, etc go well.

I talked with other people and their info on XJT was dated, but they knew guys who took 10+ years to upgrade, let alone go to the majors, so I’m just trying to get a real idea about what’s going on.

 

25% of every new hire class at UAL will consist of XJT pilots. That’s true. 600 pilots last year is so far from true that I’m sure you heard that wrong. UAL hired less than 300 last year from ALL sources. Upgrade at XJT is down to 6 years and hopefully going down further. Nobody knows if that will change or not.

 

I agree that you may have heard wrong. At least I hope you did, and that recruiting isn't giving blatantly incorrect information. United didn't hire close to 600 in 2017. However, at this point it's a reasonable estimate for 2018 and beyond, considering their retirements and growth plans. We'll see. If that ends up being true, then 150 per year from the XJT CPP isn't bad.

Upgrade times will likely drop. They *could* possibly go down to 3 years for someone hired now, but that's a big unknown. Transitioning ASA pilots will be filling captain vacancies for a while, so that could cause the upgrade times to stagnate before going down again. Either way, I wouldn't come to ExpressJet if upgrade time is most important to you.

That said, the potential time it would take for a new hire to get to UAL through the CPP is fast, and upgrading is not required. I would say it's likely even less than 5 years, which should be faster than any of the flow programs at other regionals. As you mentioned, you have to be successful with the Hogan, interview, and possess a 4 year degree. These hurdles catch a lot of people, but the result is a shorter line for those who make it through.

 

Maybe they meant 600 got “hired” into the CPP pool?

 

That would be way off as well. The pool, as of a couple of months ago, only had around 260 people.

 

Right now the CPP pool doesn't have a whole lot of pilots however I do expect that to change when the second attempt guys start to fill in. The other unknowns are where will the CRJ guys fit in to the CPP pool. It has been said that they would start on a separate list but I swear they said something about merging the two CPP lists down the line (which may affect a new hire). As for upgrades with the CRJ guys filling the captain vacancies for at least a year or maybe two depending on growth I don't see the upgrade time dropping for at least another two years unless we have growth l.

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The moral of this story, don’t come to ExpressJet until significant improvements are made. Because if they fail to offer improvements or actual incentives, things are going to come crashing down very quickly. Especially by the summer. Just spoke with a chief earlier, stated that staffing is getting dire and they have absolutely no one to cover.