*****ing about 2.5 year upgrades on mainline equipment. That’s a new one.

Not to take away from the real reasons to complain,,, this doesn’t seem like the issue to stand on.

 

I think the basis of the complaints is not the years to upgrade, but rather the comparative time to upgrade at the legacies being quicker than here at a LCC.

We should have better career progression than the Big 3 and better pay than a regional. Any time one of those criteria gets out of whack, guys start considering their life choices.

 

That was my point. I wasn’t trying to say 2.5 years wasn’t a fast upgrade, it certainly is. I must have done a poor job expressing that. Mea Culpa.

 

Isn't it always relative? Yes, it's historically good, but comparatively not great. And to hold the plug on an E190 in 2.5 years vs 6-9 months to hold a 737 at Delta probably also speaks to future seniority movement in that seat. To say nothing of the pay rate difference. So I think it is an important point of comparison.

300k a year sounds good, unless most of your peers make 400k. Then not so good. Relativity.

 

Its all worth it though when you hit the 14 year mark and start holding a solid junior line on the bus.

 

Didn't Delta "furlough" a bunch and then close to 2k(?) took early retirements in 2020. Plus they have a headwind of retirements over the next 10 years, plus trying to grow while retiring and filling the missing 2K pilots that left. We have people on the top end of the list with 15-20 years left, my guess is that a majority of the top 50% of our list has 15+ years left. I get being frustrated about upgrade times however comparing our supplemental bid to DAL and UAL's system bid is still kind of apples and oranges. 2021 system bid had a junior guy 11/19 hire get awarded captain. At that time was less than 2 years to be awarded a CA spot. Baring no covid, and early outs my guess is you would have never seen upgrade times at DAL go to a New hire, or UAL having unfilled spots. Unfortunately we simply do not have that kind of movement that the legacy carriers have right now. Along with that, the supplemental bid had 0 vacancies and 0 backfill on the 190 along with very upgrades compared to a year long system bid, barring no more issues my guess is growth continues for the 2022 system bid and upgrades stay around the 2 year mark which for Jetblue is historically low. 2.5 years is still better than it was pre-covid.

 

Pre-COVID Delta had <1 year upgrades in the MD-88 in 2018-19.
In this hiring environment everyone who has apps in at JB should probably also have them in at other airlines.
JB is a great place to work… when better jobs aren’t hiring.

 

fair enough. I forgot about 2019. But I still think 2.5 is on par with the environment. We simply have no retirements and are built on growth.

Majors have retirements, retirements that happened in 2020 and growth. No doubt it’s a good time to be at DAL/UAL. But for jetblue 2.5 isn’t bad.

 

Wasn’t that long ago pilots were getting their own 73 type just to interview at Southwest…knowing full well they were about to sit right seat for 10 years.

 

Good times are really good at the legacies, but bad times could be really bad. JB seems to handle the downturns comparatively well, but the peaks aren’t nearly as high here.

Maybe things are different now with industry consolidation and government intervention, and maybe there’s still a few years left in this bull market, but overall, slow, consistent growth can end up looking better than the boom/bust cycle if you zoom out a little.