Heard through the rumor mill that ASA has stopped interviewing/hiring for the short term because of problems in their contract negotiations. Truth or flame bait?

 

Hey STICK, where ya @?

I don't know but I find it very hard to believe that contract negotiations would cause a stand still with hiring. After all, they're new hire FO’s and not street CA’s.

 

I just talked with H/R yesterday...they didn't incidcate that hiring was on hold. In fact she said I should be contacted next week for an interview date.

 

There is so much flying that needs to get done. Most of the lines are built for greater than 80 hours and I hear that Delta / ASA is still having to cancel flight on a daily basis because of crew shortages. I'm on reserve and I'm flying and getting extended quite a bit. We just even gave away a CRJ 200 to Comair and put on hold the receiving of a CRJ 700 because we can't crew them. Negotiations are definitely holding up a lot of things, but its been 4 years or so and they have always been hiring. Who knows though these days?

 

I've been wondering the same thing and even alluded to it on the ASA-Skywest merger thread.

We had a recruiter jumpseat with us a few weeks ago, and I asked him about hiring plans past May, and he said they didn't like to plan that far in advance. But ASA has known since at least January that they were hiring 40/month thru May. Then Skywest extended their hiring window to '08, but nothing yet for ASA. We're losing ground ops to Delta in June. SW has opened a small reserve base in ATL. Some of the new ramps have the Skywest name on them instead of ASA.

Also May lines have shrunk by at least 10, and a lot of the high block time has been reduced. Plus the aforementioned 50 seat flying going to Comair, and the 2-70 seat deliveries temporarily put on hold. Near as I can tell, they're about 90 pilots short on Capt and F/O sides on the 50 alone, supposedly the pilots are just about out of training.

Anyway, it's all slightly suspicious, you think they'd announce hiring thru the rest of the year at least, since they've had a lot of attrition.

 

BTW - congrats TinPusher on getting an interview date soon!

 

I have no idea..... but I'll make a call on Monday and find out.

Stick

 

Didn't exactly give a CRJ-200 to Comair, we have plenty sitting in remote. And you put on hold receiving two of Comair's CRJ 700's.

 

Well, thank you, but I don't have a confirmed interview. I just did the "phone screen" with h/r. She said she would have the actual pilots who grant interviews take a look at my resume next week and they would call me if they wanted to interview me. But I would think they are at least interested if they bothered to call me.