Classes Suspended
 

I’ve heard all new hire classes have been suspended indefinitely. Anyone else hear this?


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Nope.

What is your source of information?

Talking to the instructors it sounds like the pause in hiring is common in the summer time. But they seem to suspect the pause won't last as long as people are thinking as we get into summer.

That may be it. A friend had a friend text him yesterday that his class had been suspended indefinitely.


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Thanks for sharing Bruno

IMHO the slow down is a combination of a high productivity contract as well as a means for increasing airline performance. We need more spares to get the on time and completion factor up. Once that settles you will see new bases opening and hiring will resume. Summer always has a hiring lull anyways.
Now on the flip side there could be other variables at work but an airline like Frontier has to grow or it will not make it.

I was a 26 March hire. Told to expect June’ish training on that day, then an official email saying July-August, and then a late April a phone call from the hiring team saying training classes will *start* in December. Also, they won’t tell you where you are in the pool, so you might even be looking at longer start dates. All the others in my interview group got the same message.

The reasons were a bit confusing, primarily crediting this to increased productivity, yet at same time they are still expecting to stay on their growth profile. Guessing a lot of guys can’t hang out for 9 months waiting on their training.

Not sure if anyone else can explain the behind-the-scenes why Frontier is expecting to triple in size over next ~5 years yet are now significantly delaying their pilot hiring/training??


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All I can say to that is; when I was hired we heard similar stories of growth, getting up to 140 aircraft from 60 something within 5 years. Every year it's been max blast hiring followed by full stop for the winter and foreseeable future. Hiring always started back up by the early fall. We have added aircraft on schedule as they stated since I came on board.

A lot of info from management seems like bs and smoke and mirrors, but the growth has happened as projected in my time here.

They are trying to run as lean as possible over the summer to try and pad the numbers for when they announce the IPO this summer. Same thing they pulled last time when they were attempting the IPO before they put the pause on it (Summer 2017). I’ll put money on it that they’ll start small classes again in August or September with large classes again toward the end of the year.

+1

To all those guys that didn’t apply here when the contract battle was raging...then subsequently applied and were hired only to have your class postponed: I hope you hang in there and come to work here. I, and many others, owe you a beer.

One only needed to look at Spirit over the past year to see the effects of voting in a nearly identical contract.

Spirit also put a hold on hiring and upgrades for a long time as they reaped the benefits of increased productivity. We are now hiring and upgrading again, but there was a pause.

This is not meant to be a negative post, simply a statement of how I see it. If you're in the pool, hang in there, or keep your apps updated elsewhere. Your choice I guess.

Or come to Spirit now and leapfrog your pool buddies since we're going to merge anyways. :D

You’d have to be crazy or stupid to wait around for frontier when every other major is hiring.

But if nobody else is calling, then I would be patient.

At least 3 people from my interview group in early March have all ready found employment elsewhere.

I was also called. Late February interview and hire. HR said that the pilots taken out of the pool for class would be based on order of interview date. He didn’t give any indication of when classes would resume and that they are taking it a month at a time. He said the email regarding July/August classes was now probably being overly optimistic.

Good. Hopefully they were senior to you

Does anybody know the typical size of classes and frequency? One class a month with 25 people? Like many others in the pool, I’m trying to read the tea leaves and figure out when I could start.

It can be anything from 6-36. I know it’s not what you were looking for but so far this year, that has been the range.

No, that’ll work! Thanks! I just wanted a rough idea to guesstimate flow through the pipeline once everything gets turned on again.

The pool is actually a continuation of the interview.

If you post more than three times on the subject on APC, you’re off the island.
:eek:

I think both are poolies here, actually......

Not to mention really smart dudes with other airline monikers......:confused:

Im currently in the pool. Got a call that it will be between September to December worst case scenario.. but alot of F9 pilots i talk to do say that they might get back on schedule in August.....
Hiring is halted for now. That is true.

They did the exact same thing the last 2 summers in a row. I'm sorry that you are put in this position. I'm willing to bet classes will start again September at the latest.

Thanks for the info! Hopefully..
Patience is the name of the game

What’s crazy is, a lot of premium trips have been dumping into the folder. A lot of MCO and PHL ironically enough. Overstaffed?

Gross incompetence by crew scheduling....

Nothing new there.....sadly.....

I’ve been wondering the same thing. It’s been happening daily.

Vja and ja were pretty common In the previous agreement. That was before a northeast base. Doesn’t mean we’re understaffed. It’s pretty clear we’re fat on pilots right now. There were 96 lines system wide built under 75 in April. That translates to 100’s if not over 1000 hrs of soft time. That’s without ANY rig factored in.

I agree. I do not think that a few premium trips indicate any understaffing at all.

I need to grab my iPad and read the contract, but I believe it's set up to create a lot of premium trips. Anything that falls into open time after reserves are assigned trips following aggressive reserve goes into premium, right?

I remember thinking, while reading the TA, that we should see a fair amount of trips drop into the premium folder.

And unless reserves are flying more than 50 or 60 hours a month, we ain't under staffed

I’m at 27 hours of credit EXcluding any credit accumulated by flying on my days off. Exactly halfway through my reserve days this month.

On track for 54 credit. Denver reserve captain. Short call. Mornings.

Correct. That didn’t change. The new agreement just eliminated 1.25% and made it a free for all on the 1.5%. Basically relieved crew scheduling from having to make a bunch of phone calls. Those phone calls were a major driver of disputes as they tended to make mistakes frequently. Some mistakes were due to lack of contractual knowledge and some due to the language itself (gray areas). IMO it’s better now that we took crew scheduling out of the loop on premium. All they can do now is add inc. which is a good thing.

Many airlines shut down much of their training for the summer so that the instructors can fly the line during the busiest months.

Joe

Yup.

Sometimes if they get behind on training, they have to make the call whether to invest in their near future staffing, or send the instructors to the line. If you cover the summer at the expense of training, you might get burned over the holidays later in the year.

Understood. That’s not what’s going on at F9. Were simply overstaffed.

BL spoke at Recurrent this morning, said hiring embargo is usual effect of summer turning sim PIs loose to fly the line. Zero change here.

Will resume in 2 months, and continue through end of year.

Thier turning them loose because there’s no new hire classes, that happened first. No offense but BL says a lot of things that turn out to be false. We’re overstaffed by at least 100 pilots. When we get another 8/10 (depending on % spares) ac we won’t be.

It’s not a good thing for many reasons... the first being it undermines seniority... junior manning is supposed to run through the seniority list in order and then in reverse order... so now it’s basically whoever is fastest with a phone or a mouse... that’s bs... second, it relieves the company of actually having to work through their fukk ups... now they get to throw it in a folder and not think twice about it... we bailed the company out with this one... third... you’re absolutely correct... it did drive grievances and disputes... and a lot of pilots were paid a lot of money because of their incompetence, myself included... I tried to dispute an illegal pairing that was put in the premium folder and I was told to pound sand... this contract bailed the company out in so many ways and this is a big part of it... everyone said “we deserve more, we’ve earned it”... well we got the what we asked for and this turd is exactly what we deserve

We will just have to disagree on that I guess. Bottom line is premium pays more now. 150% at least.

An ALPO rep I spoke to recently said that due to improved efficiencies in scheduling software, we are 18% over staffed from that alone. You guys haven’t noticed better trips in the bid packets with more days off? We are doing the same amount of flying while needing less pilots.

Really? I dare say with ALL RGS (PT & PC) being 2 day events (that’s a 133% increase in requires sim time per pilot already on property), there is more than enough to be done.

I think it’s as simple as F9 slows hiring each summer, as that’s when many senior sim PIs have VAC, whether they fly it or chill.

My candid take after hearing Mgt this week........

JA was 150%... that’s no different... and when they JAd round 2, they’d drop trips... I got an extra 10 days off last year bc of that... I guess we will have to disagree but fewer pilots and more efficiencies for the company means compromised seniority for you