I don't see the bold part as being true for new hires. There is no reason why they can't be in the school house in the summer. They aren't being pulled off the line to switch airplanes, so there isn't a loss in the system.

Most of the instructors are DGS, so no loss there. Any SLI instructors are probably less busy because they aren't doing as much CQ or Captain upgrades as normal, to keep people on the line for the summer. (a smart training dept would train people expiring in June in May, and August people in Sept).

In 2007 they hired and trained right through the summer. In 2008, the hired in March/April and probably trained through the summer as well.

 

The question here is asked from a totally different perspective....definitely not staffing related. They are checking to see of you have a training, flying, disciplinary issue. I would check 'no'.

 

Me 2, and with no "official" policy

 

They implied, you inferred.

 

With the company going to 9 month CQ cycles, it will even out the training resources/availibility anyway.

 

I agree. Everyone needs to remember that when they spooled things up in 2007 they were only going to hire a couple hundred. That turned out to be 700.

I was told personally by BB that Delta will never say exactly what the plan is as far as hiring goes. If they have a hiring department up and running and they are saying 305, I'd be my next check that there will be more than that unless the economic indicators they are looking at turn out to be wrong. They may have some months with very small classes or maybe even a month with no classes, but I think we'll see guys coming in for most of 2011.

 

Any military guys getting called?

 

Three of the first five hired were military.

 

New hire training does not function in a vacuum. If you were to hire 300 new hires in the spring they have to go to a seat on a aircraft. That means you have to move 300 pilots off that seat to another seat. That means moving those pilots ect...
In order to sustain hiring year round the company has to overstaff the airline by about 5 to 10 percent depending on the amount of hiring. By hiring only in the fall the company can avoid some of that overstaffing which leads sadly to furloughs or surplus pilots not needed. If the economy continues to improve they may hire year round however without a major aircraft order that is not likely. We will begin to max out our current assets and hiring will only be on a attrition basis. I hope that changes with a aircraft order however no one know is talking about a order at this point. The only wildcard is the 787 discussions.

 

I am not sure about tons of money. A new hire is a training slot like any other training slot. We have many years ramped down the training department for the summer. We are doing it this year. We did it last year. There is some admin staff that would not be needed however normally they simply move them over to some other projects and then back when interviews will start. Not a huge deal or huge cost.