Are companies warehousing pilots?
 

It certainly doesn’t seem to be the case at my regional, but I have a number of friends at other regionals who indicate they are seeing long reserve times with very little flying hours, sometimes single digits a month. In some cases (Horizon) even lineholders don’t seem to be getting much time. They are getting PAID of course, at least minimum guarantee, but for the junior people there (and I’m talking junior in flying hours) they are not accumulating turbine 121 time or TT at a very good rate.

Could be when the peak of the retirement wave hits in 3-4 years that having 3000 TT with maybe 500 TPIC will be enough to be competitive, I don’t know, but unless utilization rates change it seems unlikely some of the new hires will have much more than that, especially the RATP guys.

And this has to be costing management some money. I just don’t get it.

That's the conclusion I've come to at my regional, though I have not heard one person say so.

Other than Horizon, which ones are you referring to?

Mesa on there earnings call said they were “wearhousing” as you call it. By 100 pilots. Horizon air has mentioned the same...

Lol they lie, they wouldn't be paying 300 percent for open time if we were staffed.

I think that’s illegal, except in Nevada.....oh, wait. Never mind. :o

Endeavor has a warehouse full of pilots because "growth!"

PSA has a warehouse full of pilots because the airline needs a place to find pilots the next time that their scheduling software crashes.

Horizon has a warehouse full of pilots because they don't want to get fired by Alaska this time.

Brickyard not only has a warehouse full of pilots, but they also have a factory in which they build pilots. That's vertical integration to the next level.

I think they were all thinking there was going to be some kind of scope relief from UAL and there would all of a sudden be a lot of new flying. Those with the pilots to staff it would get it, and they could charge more for that due to decreased bid competition. Thankfully UAL pilots dind't give an inch on scope relief (thus far).

Comment yesterday on the Endeavour thread:

I’m not sure if Brickyard has a “warehouse” full of pilots, although we are getting on the fat side. However reserve times are still low and upgrade times are 2 years and still decreasing along with a lot of the more senior guys finally moving on. As far as I know there is no issues of people not flying.

I've broken min guarantee 2 out of 3 months on reserve so far and am on track for this month as well. I've been blocking 50-60 a month on reserve with no extra flying on days off and credited 65, 79, and 85 hours in those 3 months respectively. I should hold a line next month too.

It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? At some point the minimums will have to go down to be competitive... how much is anybody’s guess.

The whole situation is very strange. I've worked at Horizon for nearly 20 years, and we've never been fat on pilots... until now.

In the past, management's standard policy was to keep staffing levels extremely low. Reserve pilots were used to cover "known" open trips (left over when bidding closed), with no reserve coverage left over for irregular operations or sick calls. It was actually cheaper for the company to offer premium pay for open flying than it was to staff the airline properly.

We complained about the staffing levels for years, but it took a major meltdown in 2016-2017 for the company to do something about it.

As a mid-level line holder, I average around 65 hours per month. This is actually a lot of flying for the Q400, as legs tend to be short. I'm averaging 4 - 5 legs per duty day, with 15 days off per month. It's not a bad schedule, but I'd be perfectly O.K. if they spread the flying around and used the junior guys a little more. Management has complained for years that we cost too much money and were "overpaid", and now they're just paying pilots to sit around. I don't get it.

It seems pretty obvious that the ones who can afford to are indeed warehousing pilots. It is smart. It reduces likelihood of being caught short, helps attrition (takes longer to get hours needed to move on), and enables them to extend their training out further, lengthening the “pipeline” of pilot supply. It may even be that, once they’re on property and trained, it’s cheaper to pay more pilots minimum pay than pay fewer extra/incentive pay. But regardless the strategic value is worth the incremental cost...what did canceling flights due to no pilots “cost” Horizon?

AS was very not happy. Some QX managers got fired, and they're on double secret probation. They cannot afford a repeat.

Probably very true, but to the RATP with 1250 hours who came aboard in the latter part of the panic hiring who actually NEEDS to get hours to be competitive when the peak of the retirement wave opens the doors wider for hiring at the majors, long reserve times with little actual flying could be a career killer, because unlike a couple other legacies, AS won’t have huge numbers of those mandatory retirements.

This is sort of like the coach burning a players redshirt without actually giving them enough playing time to develop them.

Caveat Emptor. Choose your regional carefully. At least you get to chose these days.

For some folks QX geography might be worth it, but QX has never been known for fast career progression.

Endeavor has been offering time off without pay for at least 9 months now.

Interesting development. I kinda wondered if other regionals were doing what Horizon was doing. Going quite fat on pilots. The world wonders.