While passing through the schoolhouse last month we were told hiring plans are to continue 40/mo until Oct then increase to 60/mo.

Is it Scotty B? Heard through the coconut telegraph he was the junior award.
Thanks

Unfortunately, no. Only ~180-200 retirements per year for the next bunch of years. Unless the airline is doubling in size in the next few years, whoever told you that is wrong.

Yes it was, but he had several junior to him get the award. One was guy who left SWA and had been here 7-8 months...

Been here 26 years and they never know what the pilot hiring numbers are from year to year. It usually goes from no hiring to oh crap we need 600 in a year.

I don't know how many they will hire going forward, but I met 40 new hires thursday and there are 50 more coming in july.

This is the only true and (ironically) accurate post in this thread about hiring.

While I agree with both of these statements, it's not at all clear to me how Management gets hiring numbers so wrong over and over again?

Not enough simulators (how can that happen?), 4.a.2.b, then stop hiring, then trim the entire company costs by x%, then HIRE, HIRE, HIRE, HIRE. We seems to go from unable to fly the known schedule due to lack of pilots to what's the most we can hire for the next 3-5 years. Who's running this "clown show"?

Aircraft orders require years of advance planning, age 65 retirements are a known, the only "unknown, unknown" is fleet growth and it seems that we might have an entire department to massage those numbers?

Would professional managers do a better job than pilots who prefer not to fly? Enquiring minds want to know?


:eek:

I think that might fall into the "be careful what you wish for" category.

My impression of some of this mis-management is that it's occurring outside (above) flight operations. I think you're giving our pilot managers credit for more influence than they really have on the manning decisions.

"Professional managers"? as in non-pilots who've never flown a single flight in our system? I don't think any of us would benefit from having positions currently held by pilots filled with folks who can't possibly relate to the daily challenges we face.

agree: be careful what you wish for. The environmental committee's report on the systematic removal of airframe Hepa filters is disheartening to say the least. Back side of the clock flying, with stidy after study showing the negative health effects. Requests for longevity data ignored by the union (I've heard anywhere from ten to thirty months on average retirement months before death). the optimizer destroying our quality of life. our A-fund devaluation over time. our hourly pay is no longer industry leading. But hey, we have new iPads and we now get birthday cards. Gotta go now and brush up my resume. Time to move on.