Adlerdriver

Probably because at most companies, they have bids at least quarterly if not every month. They're not awarding upgrades with training two calendar years into the future.

StarClipper

Ok so is that going to be the case when Purple starts their new biding system as mentioned in a couple post back?

Pakagecheck

No, because one will bid in seniority for a slot, so if a senior person passes, its by choice. Also, one knows that when over 400 captain slots are avail, it takes some time to train out, considering the fact that almost 10% of the company are being awarded captain slots, and, oh by the way, 85% of the captain slots were wide body captains.

Daniel Larusso

Big picture, there is nothing in the old or new contract that forces the company to change the way they've posted bids in the past. The biggest change with respect to this requirement for one system bid to be completely trained out before the next system bid is put out. However we have to transition to the new system and currently we have two seats with training planned out to 2019. We'll have bids before then, but it's hard to envision having a real answer on this before late 2018-sometime in 2019. If I had to guess, I'll say that ultimately they will have basically the same number of postings per year they've always had, unless they're expecting possible FDA growth in the upcoming business plan. It always seems like FDA decisions are out of sync with the other stuff. In that case, I'd expect a small system bid that trains out in time for them to include FDA spots in a larger system bid, or a small system bid before another larger one. None of this is really the problem though, training backlogs are.

StarClipper

You're still not getting my point. As an example, at other companies you bid for Capt and training date, however that training date must be with a certain timeframe "I think 3mths at UA" if not, you start getting Capts pay whether or not they move you Class.

Sounds like what you're saying is at Purple even if you bid for training under your new system, the company can keep pushing back the trading date with no penalty

Pakagecheck

Nope, I totally get your point. They can do that when there are say 10 captain slots, not 417. You are correct, other companies have that provision, we do not. As Adler stated, small bid thats possible. But also, small bid, the then most won't have been awarded it. Yes, they could potentially push it back with no penalty. As I stated before, it didn't cause me grief and I upgraded at 90%.

StarClipper

I understand what you're saying now, just thought with smaller bids, these provisions should be in place to prevent unnecessary moving of class dates.