Yes, that's exactly what *I'm* saying!

There were 30 in the January upgrade class. Then there were only 6 in the February upgrade class. The March upgrade class only has 4 in it.

From 30,..... to 6,..... to 4,..... I think you can see the trend.

PSA is slated to accept 3 new CRJ 900s per month (15 new Captains) and they're flowing 5 Captains per month to mainline. That equates to a minimum of 20 new Captains needed every month, (or 60 in the first 3 months of 2016) just to stay EVEN. And that doesn't account for Captains who are leaving for other jobs.

So if PSA needs a minimum of 60 new Captains (Jan - Mar) and has only scheduled 40 for upgrade in that same period,...... well I've done the math for you.

For certain, you could say that the "quick upgrade" is in question. And it's not because we don't have enough F/O's who are qualified to upgrade. It must be something else!

 

I'm sure DP is an avid APC reader.

 

You didn't account for the fact we were a little overstaffed on the captain side in January so they don't need to upgrade as much. We are currently staffed for about 110 aircraft and we just got our 100th RJ so we have a few months until we become understaffed if hiring does not pick up.

 

So what your saying is, the union let them hire as many DEC's as they wanted regardless of need.

 

The union doesn't control hiring and can't do anything if the company hires a DEC for an unfilled upgrade spot.

 

I believe that, but how did PSA end up with DEC's and a surplus of captians? Also how will the pilot group defend against the company waiting until their short 60-70 captians and then dropping two upgrade classes of 35 back to back effectively circumventing upgrading FOs that their unable to replace.
It would seem the play for them would be to hire captians and keep the FO's where they are. Your suggesting as long as they can pencil whip their staffing needs there's nothing that can be done. I am not blaming the union, but they are the organized representation for the pilot group.

 

Huh? The reason for DEC's at the time was there weren't enough qualified FO's to fill the positions. Now that lots of guys have their bid in but not the seniority and/or not enough CA vacancies, there's no need for any more DECs

 

I understand that, but it appears now that they over hired for the DECs, the upgrade classes now are inconsistent with the amount of airplanes being received. That means they preinvested in hireing DEC's which is why their upgrading fewer guys now.
So yes, when they hit the bottom of the list for upgrades the exploited the numbers they "needed" in order to get guys on. There is no other explanation as to why the my "needed" them so desperately 4 months ago, and are now somehow slightly "fat" on captains now.

 

I'm not sure how we are "fat" on CA when they keep getting JrMan calls. They aren't upgrading FOs because we can't replace them and will be short FOs if they upgrade. When we start parking the 200s, staffing will be adequate for a couple months. The company is still just kicking the can down the road hoping someone will go under and provide a flood of pilots.

 

Which at this point, I don't think is going to happen. At least not a company that would flood PSA with applicants. Things aren't looking too good for AWAC currently but there wouldn't be a mass exodus of their pilots to PSA. Remember that AAG plans on parking quite a few 200s this year. They are going to come from somewhere...