You definitely have to live within 2 hours drive from a listed base or be willing to move there by your start date. They grandfathered current pilots on that caveat, as we have a lot of pilots that drive as far as 5 hours to make their start times, but it looks like a pretty strict policy for new hires.

There's always a "chance". If and when more cities get added will probably have a lot to do with how much the latest additions help them with staffing. If the applicant pool doesn't grow like they hoped then I would expect more cities to be added or even current cities to be dropped off the list if there is no recruitment movement there. That being said they have never really "closed" a base so to speak but anything is possible with all the changes going on lately.

If the application inbox overflows with resumes and the hiring goals get met then I'd say any new cities making it on the list probably won't be a for a while.

Personally I have been one of the many hoping they would abandon the domicile system in favor of true home basing or make the city list so long its becomes irrelevant. If they did that the staffing problems would be gone overnight. That is something they always seem to be discussing but I think they get a lot of resistance on it from Farnborough.

I think there is a huge paranoia over travel costs skyrocketing to get crews in position and caught up with there assigned tail numbers. The bizarre thing is except for VNY almost all of us always start and finish our tours with an airline ticket. The list of cities though seem to coincide pretty good with the average big cities we see aircraft doing RON's at.

A lot of us are frustrated because when they buy us a ticket out of a domicile almost always we can find a cheaper fare out of the city we actually live in. So its a bit perplexing as to why they seem to think the way they do. My view is home basing would end up dropping travel costs in the long run but I don't have the "big picture." so who knows.

 

word from those on the inside is that the company did a lot of analysis and made the recommendation to the decision makers ... I imagine we'll hear something on it in the next few weeks.

Also in regards to not hiring guys that are overqualified, that couldn't be farther from the truth. I have seen some of the recent hires and they vary from 2,500 hr Cape Air guys that barely meet minimums to a 20,000+ ex airline guy typed and current on the King Air 350. Single pilot types WILL have a hard time getting hired as there is a huge emphasis on standardization going on. I would recommend anyone who doesn't have a good crew background to do some studying and take advantage of that briefing that's sent out to guys before the evaluations.