Considering that as a pilot you are already investing your career and pension in your company, it is wise to diversify away from that part of the economy

So summer or later for a bid. An interesting questionis how much will folks want to stay international vs domestic now.

Probably summer would be my guess. Here’s my 2 cents...

1. Retirements - I can only speak for the triple but we have 40-some retirements who have given their one year bonus notice. Most of those retirements are late in the year, Oct-Dec.

2. Acft deliveries - We are still slated to get 2 more triples this year sometime during the summer months.

40 retirements, 2 additional jets, my guess is 50-60 777 MEM Capts in primary, who knows about secondaries.

Right now, the only really “open” training letters are the triple & the 76. They will probably be exhausted by the end of the summer so taking all of this together in aggregate makes me think a summer bid with training in Sept.

There are people scattered about on all of the training letters but there are lots of FDA returnees and LCA/Flex types and not that many who had 19-01 bid awards remaining.

There are a lot of unknowns right now.

A bunch of next month's flying went into SUB as FedEx consolidates some of the shipping between markets by adding legs onto bigger\smaller airplanes to better suit the predicted loads.

And, trucks more freight because of the uncertainty regarding our delivery guarantee,

I'm thinking a decent percentage of would be retirees will rescind their notification, barring a big snap back in the stock market.

Some will no doubt stay the course, but others will look at their investment balance along with the typical recovery time frames (2-3 years) and say, you know what, another year wouldn't be that bad. Especially if I can drop 30% of it and give this retirement income level a shot.

From SVP Don Dillman todayRealignment bid

We are actively analyzing scenarios that range from realignment bids to hiring additional First Officers. The current volatility in our business prevents us from putting together a firm staffing plan. We are reevaluating every month and will let you know ASAP.

The reason why they can't put together a plan is because they way they do bids turns into an 18 month long fiasco. If they did bids month to month, they would always know what they need.

Why don't they do this then? Is the reasoning from a business perspective and not an airline one?

I’ve heard it is the way the budget for training.

I would even settle for quarterly bids.

I do believe though with current events they really don’t know what to do.

Thank you for being an adult and just answering the question without all the BS that could come from answering this question.

Asked and Answered

i love this.

No "like" button here, but thank you.