Capacity Reduction / Hiring Freeze
 

Well it’s hit us too now. Immediate hiring freeze, voluntary leaves, 10% reduction for April and anticipated 20% for May.

Understanding they will surely let us know, but anyone with better than speculation able to weigh in if this affects scheduled classes that are about to start? (I’m in April 1 ground)

Is this something that was said internally? Was there a memo? source? any estimate on how long the hiring freeze will last?

Internal communication from the CEO sent at 5pm. No estimate given on how long it will last.

Same here. Curious to hear what comes of this.

Check Comply.

wow that sucks

A glimmer of hope, albeit a small one, the memo said the hiring freeze was on all “non-operational” employees. Could maybe mean pilot hiring continues. Maybe...

Nope. Tomorrow’s Interviews all cancelled

What’s your source? I have a friend who is interviewing tomorrow who has not been notified of this, as of this posting.

Not trying to be a Debbie downer, but that’s 3 weeks off... I have no source or any knowledge, but if I had to bet, I’d say it’s not happening... everything about this situation has gotten so out of control, it’s almost scary...

how would he/she be notified?? We just found out a few hours ago...

A few hours is long enough to send a mass email out for those who are supposed to be there at 6:15am tomorrow. How else are they supposed to be notified?

It might just be better to hang onto your current job vs starting a new job at the bottom, at least right now.....Unless you are at TSA. Those guys and gals will lose the flow and the out of flow hiring all at once.

I was scheduled tomorrow and got the call earlier today, all interviews are cancelled for now

What about the classes mid way through their training, have they stopped them too?

As of now, the current classes still going. For now!

I don’t know if the slowdown and reducción had anything to do but last class out of 24 only about 7-10 got hired.

There are 2 upgrade classes still scheduled. One next week and another next month. I’m curious what they do with those.

For what it’s worth, slow-down or not, last year around this time Frontier decided to suddenly stop hiring as well. From what I gather we have a yearly habit of closing off the hiring/training pipeline for summer. Last year we also offered COLA’s at this time.

I was supposed to be an April new hire and it wasn’t until September I got the call. I’m trying to stay cautiously positive that maybe this letter we received from BB was more of us reverting to the old plan more so than steaming ahead with an ambitious growth plan...

Unfortunately I don’t think this is the same thing. While it does fit the pattern on the hiring side, we are cutting capacity by 20% in May. That is unprecedented since Indigo has been at the helm. I’m just hoping it doesn’t continue indefinitely or there will likely be downgrades and furloughs. We’ll see when they decide what to do with the June and July schedules.

Well I don't think it's possible for me to get screwed two months in a row so I've got that going for me.

Then again....

Word is the April new hire class is gonna be cut in half now. The March 17th Upgrade class is going to run as scheduled, not sure on April Upgrade.

I’m an April class. Where’s this coming from?

Today I was told that the one day interview cancellation notice was due to all HQ employees being sent home due to the COVID outbreak in Denver. Also told that if the new-hire class does not go as planned they will create a pool with these candidates for when hiring does start back up. It seemed that they are doing everything possible to do right by the people who were expecting to leave their current jobs this week and was very encouraging. Good on the Frontier!

I was in Denver already when I got the call the interview was cancelled, they were very apologetic and got me a flight back home right away and it seems like we will be the first ones to know when they resume interviewing and hiring.

Unfortunately it seems like the recruiting department is the second to last person to know what the deal is. Fortunately they are all class acts. I had a similar experience last year and they were extremely accommodating and transparent which was nice.

Sorry to hear about the interview. With any luck, you and everyone else out there with an interview or CJO will be getting good news in the near future. Let’s all hope so at least.

I’ve sent two emails over three days with no response. Im absolutely certain that you’re right in them being the last to know anything concrete, but still pretty nerve wracking when we’re all a few days away from having to put in notice at our current employers. Trying to stay positive as I know we aren’t the only ones affected...

I have a close friend at the Airbus training facility, and he was told that by a couple sim instructors. I hope for your sake it’s not true but that’s the word they are getting.

I hope so too, I was and still am pretty excited about the chance at working here, everyone seems to be happy working here and that says a lot about the company.

You’re preaching to the choir. Last year, I was supposed to be in April class and I got a 1 week notice saying I wasn’t in it anymore because it was cut in half. I was told a May class... Then weeks prior I got another notice saying classes we deferred indefinitely. I then waited until September for a class date.

Management, marketing, crew planning are always evaluating what they need to do to run the operation efficiently. Whatever they decide gets passed on to recruiting. The staffing situation is unfortunately more volatile than ever. Trust me though, the hiring contacts you have will do everything in their power to be fair and upfront with you. JA was absolutely a saint in the process.

I was glad I waited, it was worth it in the end despite being so uncertain. Just do what you can to hold on and obviously stack the cards in your favor if something better than your current situation comes along.

Thanks for sounding off on this. Im glad I have decent seniority where I am just in case. Turbulent times for sure..

Delay of April Class
 

My friend in the March class told me they just suspended the April class by 1 month. Anyone else hear the same.

This is accurate. Straight from the training department.

When do you think they’re going to let all of us in the April class know? I already had to put my two weeks notice in which deferred my scheduled upgrade at my current company, would really be nice to see something official on this.

As much as this situation sucks, this is effecting the entire industry. United cancelled their March class last minute, everything is on hold. To mention how this affected your scheduled upgrade does not come across well. This effects everybody, not just you. I'm sure you'll be told as soon as the people responsible to let you know are told to.

Darn your upgrade... Let’s hope the bulk of us don’t get Furloughed.

I think we have a little ways to go, at least at frontier, until the wheels fall off... this is a bad situation, no doubt, but all we can do is show up and do our best... if they only pushed the class back a month and are still running upgrades, then we’re pretty far from people being on the street... it’s been mentioned on this message board 1000 times about how frontier is built to withstand a recession and other calamities... make money... save money... repeat... hopefully this all blows over in a couple months and everyone recovers and the industry returns to what it was just a month ago

Capacity reduction for May was bumped up considerably from original expectations. BB also posted our cash available... I wonder how long it’ll last us.

Now for some good news, fuel is cheap and getting cheaper by the day. Last time it was well over $4 per gallon with much higher burn rates in the non neo we had at the time. Other carriers are reducing capacity at similar rates. Last but not least it seems as though there’s a real plan to get back to normal as quickly as possible. That should help calm markets and society in general. Because before today it didn’t really seem to most people there was a plan. Myself included. Oh and last time we had 200 million and went through it in 5/6 months. If you want to know the plan just watch the unedited YouTube press conference. I found it surprising good.