SkyWest to stop up grades
 

For anyone that cares, Oct 6 will be the last upgrade class of the year. The reason, to short on FO's. However, we all know this can change at anytime.

Expect this to become an industry trend in the next couple or years.

Holding back needed upgrades because of a lack of newhires has been going on for months, and in some cases YEARS at the regional level.

Of course simply raising FO pay (1st year especially!) to make the job more appealing would be too easy...

What is going to happen when they are short captains because every one is leaving?

Really? Tell that to UA.

The same thing I was thinking!

CQFO's? How do you all feel about that? And off subject, How does the SW pilot group feel about ALPA?

They already are on the EMB side.

yeah, i wouldn't call it an industry trend.. pinnacle tried to pull this one over on us back in sept/oct of last year. look where we are now.. another vacancy for over 30 capt, and they cant fill them...

like i said look where we are at. our management was dumb enough to do this to try and force us into signing a contract, you know the entire doom and gloom scenario, yet about 3 months after that they ran out of captains and couldn't even fill half the upgrade classes. so if you want to see what will happen at skywest just look at pinnacle.

the only difference is skywest doesnt have a contract. management is going to do what they need to do to make sure the planes are flying and that the business keeps moving. for the captains at skywest i am sorry, you guys are about to get screwed big time.. how do i know? the management here tried to do everything to get us to give up some of our contractual rights so they could staff the planes better.. we said hell no and now they are paying the price. i think j.a. will just go to sapa and tell them what needs to be done, and it will happen.

Pinnacle can't fill upgrade slots? Why not? Not enough qualified pilots or people aren't bidding it?

Airsupport,
In what ways would management screw the captains? Do you mean by making them fly 100 hours a month, something to that effect or some other creative way that hasn't crossed my mind?

I will second that! We are short on EMB capt's in FAT. I fly with more captains from other bases lately than I do with captains based here! We have had no reserves here this month. We will have to see what September brings?

No need to worry guys. It’s SKW standard business practice SP-54 (LOL), they understand that everyone will slow down training toward the end of the year and most don’t run classes in December. Using this info (more like betting on it) they understand that our CA attrition rate will slow a little and then pick back up in the first quarter. They don’t mind playing this game seeing that they have more room to “play” with on the CA side. You can bet SKW will start running upgrade classes every 3 weeks starting in January with the maximum number of pilots in them. Remember that this is how SKW works. Less than two years ago they stopped hiring & running classes for the 4Q of 05 and 1Q of 06 (that’s 6 months total). Starting in the 2Q of 06 they then hired over 800 pilots in 12 months.

That will be the problem as more new hires are coming in with 200-300 hrs.

Up until recently, SkyWest was upgrading because of growth and attrition. With our last aircraft coming online in about a month, it'll only be for attrition now. Additionally, I'd imagine management knows exactly how many request for training records have been submitted by other airlines recently and can plan off this info as well.

SkyWestonline (internal company website) shows 57 RJ and 7 EMB captains currently in training, though this may not be very accurate.

sounds like all the more reason to not go to a regional with 500 hours. I think around 1000 PIC is a little better mark to hit so you at least meet the mins when your number comes up

exactly, there aren't enough qualified guys to bid the spots to upgrade, and a lot of the guys didn't want to upgrade because of what was happening on the capt side of things.. my theory is when you have the time and you feel confident enough to be pic then you should take the upgrade as soon as you can.

how do the screw the capts over? every time you get done with a 2, 3, or 4 day trip they would extend you, jm assignments, adding trips into an already jammed packed day, etc, etc. i was flying with a capt a couple of months ago who had to go do an extra out and back in the middle of our trip while i sat around the airport waiting for him to get back. we were delayed 1 hour so he could go do that extra turn.

yes, this is a problem. you get hired at 300 hours, you have to have 2500 to upgrade. so lets do the math. the absolute most you can fly is 1000 per year, so after 2 years you are at 2300, then add on a couple more months to get the other 200... it could be a long drawn out process.

Word is that they have received only a small fraction of the number of applications they expected. And their attitude is still very patronising to highly qualified applicants.

I have a buddy who has about 5000 PIC on jets and is totally qualified and not some oddity and they told him he was not for United. Funny. I guess he is too qualified. I wonder if those 21 year olds they used to hire with 1000/100 were as well qualified.....

I would suspect most legacy carriers are interested in retaining their latest additions to the flight deck, as oppose to training them, giving them the type, and having them jump ship to oh I don't know Southwest....

The point is this, I agree with you 100% that your buddy with 5K PIC should be looked at and hired before a 1000 hour wonder, however, a lot of folks have gone to certain airlines (won't mention any names) gotten the type and/or experience, then jumped ship. Legacy carriers realize that there is a vast pool of "less" qualified applicants that are salivating at the chance to work at a "major", and whom they can count on retaining for a long time. So you tell me...but IMHO this will also become a trend.

AE is having similar problems with not having enough FO staffing to upgrade into the SF3s. Approx 250 more AA flowbacks are being recalled from AE, and they still havent figured out what will happen to the approx 400 AE/CAs who already have AA seniority numbers from the flowthrough. To make it simple: anywhere from 250-650+ CAs will be leaving in the next few years and we cant staff the airline already.

Our first year pay is higher (by $1-5/hr) than SKYW/CHQ/XJET/Comair but we still arent filling newhire classes. In my opinion, people need to have a chance at career progression as opposed to strictly higher pay. If you could get hired at AE and be given an AA seniority # then we would be the 'place to go.' If we had quick upgrades (1-2yrs) then we would be the place to go. Horizon's payscale is by far the highest of regionals, yet the people who are most interested in HZ are the ones who chose QOL over quick upgrades. There needs to be more than just $$$!

Yup. First-year regional FO pay is so low that the small differences between the companies in this regard are not that important...there a variet of good resaons to choose one regional over another, but a few dollars per hour is not one of them.

Or 1,200/year if you're a prop-driver! :D

Hooray for 100 posts! :cool:

ATP mins are 1500. Unless your airline has other minimum requirements.

How's ground school going? Are you going to FAT?

uh, yeah.. my entire post was refering to pinnacle pilots and what is required here to upgrade. 2500hrs if you have 1000hrs in pncl crj, or 3500 off the street.

ATP mins for ICAO count only 50% of your FO time towards the time reqs. Read the FARs under ATP time reqs. So lots of company policies require you to meet ICAO ATP times, esp if engaged in international ops.