jtf560

Counting on that to continue is not a wise choice. I believe this giant upgrade announcement is a tool to keep those on property from bailing out and keep a lot of hope for those deciding where they should work. It is unlikely to have any more upgrade announcements for at least a couple of months as they work their way through actually training this massive list and it is unlikely that lightning fast upgrades continue, especially of we don't get a massively improved new contract.

The company won't be able to hire enough pilots without a big, big bump in pay and will then not be able to staff airplanes and grow. That will kill the fast upgrade train. I wouldn't fault anyone too much for sticking around long enough to see if the next contract is big enough, but it will come with the cost of seniority at wherever you would have bailed out to if you hadn't waited. I'm far enough along in the career that it is worth it for me to wait, but I'm analyzing my best options if we don't get a worthy contract and I'm finally updating my logbook after we'll over a decade. I can be a maxed out captain in about half the fleets and the job is just not good enough for me to accept any of those choices over maxed out Global SIC. I will start over somewhere else before I accept a maxed out PIC position in anything other than the Globals or 650 due to quite horrific QOL in everything else. I'd maybe consider the Longitude if I could hold the 52 day schedule in it AND we get a big pay bump. Think about that before you apply at NetJets. Think about how the job will always at least kind of suck. They better up the pay quite a bit to accept an entire career of not good enough.

MinRest

Everyone needs to seriously think about what a constriction would look like as well. We all are riding the wave and with all these unnecessary upgrades, you can expect downgrades and the upgrades to go back to a decade fairly quickly...

Flyfalcons

Why do you feel these upgrades are unnecessary?

MinRest

Look at the CA/FO ratios...

How much CA on CA pairings are happening?

Unnecessary is a strong word. I mean it is a great thing. You guys deserve to upgrade. I think it is good all around, as it is smart from a management standpoint to attract people to NJA and you guys win. But unless the company commits to simply keeping everyone a CA (which they haven't and won't), it is odd to have abnormally high CA ratios though. Hopefully, the trend continues and it never becomes an issue.

Flyfalcons

The company has, and always will, keep a higher PIC:SIC ratio than the airlines.

MinRest

They haven't always done that, only post recall has that been occurring. And the ratios are higher than the CBA specifies. So the potential for downgrades are higher.

jtf560

The ratios are higher than the CBA requires, but they have been that way since I started over 17 years ago. During the furlough they were around 80%. They have gone down quite a bit since then. I believe the company prefers around the mid 60s percentage wise to cover the millions of ways schedules can get messed up since 2 SICs cannot fly together and it gives more options for the company to fix the problems when they arise.

MinRest

The company didn't downgrade during the furlough did they? When I was hired, PIC/SIC ratios were low 60s. A buddy said they are approaching 70% now. Either way, still seems higher than they need if push came to shove. Either way, sub 2 year upgrades is where NJA should be all the time.

JJDriver

NJ has always had a higher PIC/SIC ratio. Among some of the other reasons mentioned has been the amount of vacation time. Until these past couple bids when the upgrade time dropped, PICs were all maxed out on vacation, while FO’s typically were not. Only in the past few years did the FO’s start to top out as well. Also now that they’ve added a retirement age there’s another 100ish per year that will be leaving. They seem to be going hard for growing the fleet and upgrading and hiring for it. Although in 2010 I was among the 495 that was told we should never have been hired because we were only needed for growth that never happened. It’s aviation, it’s great until it’s not.

AirBear

Previously we had contract language that made it very difficult for NetJets to downgrade PIC's. I was hired in 2005 and upgraded in 2007. I stayed a PIC until I left in 2017. After the furloughs I was flying as PIC less than half the time. But I still got the paycheck.
I think the downgrade language was adjusted in a later contract deal or IBB so that it was easier to downgrade.