Was wondering what the upgrade time has dropped to now with all the hiring going on.

 

Please, someone shed some light!

 

It's still pretty high...I imagine.

 

Its mid 2000 DOH for prop and jet CA. I expect it to stay stagnant. The company royally funked up the tentative agreement for the letter 3/flowthrough issues, so now its back to arbitration. Basically, AE/AMR mgmt doesnt care about anything that goes on at AE and the ship is sinking quickly. I enjoy the flying here, and the crews, but honestly this is not a place to come if you want to advance your career beyond the regional level. Ever.

Go to Mesaba, Pinnacle, Skywest, Xjet, somewhere with a quicker upgrade(which is anywhere). Do your time and get that PIC turbine and move on. The regionals are hell and they are no place to be for an extended period of time. CAL, DAL, USAir, NWA, SWA, FedEx, UPS, United, Frontier, Spirit, Jetblue are all hiring. Find a way to get there.

 

There is seemingly a discrepancy on the ACP profile for AE..."most junior captain hire date" for tprop & jet fleets are listed as (I believe) '01 or '00...but in the "news/remarks" section at the top it says "15-20 upgrades happening per month, mostly on jets." Are those 15-20 per month all 6 and 7 year FOs??? That can't be right.

Either way, if any guys have info, I'd be interested in seeing how things play out with AE...it would seem that a captain at AE might have a dilemma at this point--stay with AE and cross ur fingers for an AA mainline job in the uncertain future, stay at AE with a good schedule til retirment, or jump ship and go to a non-AA major since you obviously have +1000 turbine PIC after all those years at AE.

 

I just left Eagle two weeks ago. Was May01 hire and still more than 100 from turboprop captain. Upgrades are happening in the jet to fill vacancies created by AA recalls. However, turboprop captain slots are not opening up due to lack of staffing. So these aren't really new captain vacancies, just shuffling people from the props to the jets.

 

AE has been offering 15-20 CA slots/mo in the recent past, but as evilatp said, it is mainly shuffling around CAs from props-jets or base transfers without backfilling those slots. As for the AE CAs, I would guess about 75% of them would prefer to stay put at AE for their career. The most junior CA has about 7yrs seniority, most are 15+yrs seniority. At that point they have great schedules and no desire to leave for another airline. Even flowing to AA, many AE CAs do not wish to go. It is a definite problem for AE because it raises our average seniority, which means pilot labor costs are much higher than other regionals we are competing against. There are still about 300 FOs between the current 5/00 Jr CA DOH and the 1/1/04 DOH. There are about 200 flowbacks returning to AA in the next year or two, so that will create some upgrade opportunities, but after that it will remain roughly stagnant (5-6yr upgrade maybe) unless something changes.

 

It seems that no matter what Eagle does, it cannot attract candidates. Why would someone go there when they can go to a handful of other regionals that are hiring and upgrade way sooner?

Eagle has offered a base guarantee, has lowered the minimums, has tried to set up their captains with majors, and now are trying to promise an in to mainline American. It seems that after all this, it is still not enough to attract candidates.

What will Eagle do next? Any ideas? Do you think they will actually raise their pay to attract people? Offer sign on bonuses? Or the worse, park planes because there are no crews to fly them?

 

My AE buddy @ Eagle reported that Eagle is already offering sign-on bonuses totaling $6000.

 

They will either have to pay their FO's like its a career airline or find a way to push out the top Captains. Eagle is suffering massive attrition from the FO ranks. I even heard on another thread that Horizon is starting to suffer FO attrition. The whole premise of a regional staffing curve is movement. The pay sucks, but you won't be there long. If that fact changes, you have to reevaluation your entire staffing paradigm and compensation plans. Eagle can't survive this labor market if they don't get their upgrade times down or their compensation way up. If you made $40k+ to start with good work rules, steady pay advancement, and good benefits, would you go and stay and Eagle? I think a lot would.