DiveAndDrive

Planesense, let me give you a couple of examples to hopefully help clear the air. As someone else said, you have to have people below you to exercise the privileges of seniority.

Generic example A:
You’re in 8th grade. You’re the king of the middle school you’re in. You get to take the cool classes, all of the younger kids think you’re the coolest, and you get all the hot chicks.

Well. You move on to 9th grade. You change buildings and go to high school. So you’re still senior to grades K through 8. But guess what? It doesn’t mean anything, since you’re in a completely different building now. You went from being the king of the campus to the doormat of the campus.

Let’s apply this to examples B, C, and possibly D.

Example B: The company wants 10% of Pilots to be on reserve. You’re number 93 out of 100 on the seniority list. So you get reserve. Next month rolls around, 10 of those people upgrade, but no one is hired to replace those 10. So now you’re number 83 out of 90. Guess what? Your seniority moved up, but your privileges did not, since you’ll still be on reserve. Let’s step through this example a few times. Each month, we’re upgrading 10 and replacing it with zero. Fast forward, and now you’re 33 out of 40. Now you have a line. So do the three people below you. So even though you’re the 33rd most senior FO in the company, it doesn’t matter since you’re only bidding above three other line holders, and 7 total people. Remember how bidding works. The most senior person gets what they want. The second most senior person gets to pick what they want, unless it was taken by the first most senior person. Then, they get their second choice. This goes on down the list. So if you’re the 33rd most senior FO, but you’re only bidding above 3 other lineholders, basically you get to bid for 4 lines. If you’re literally the last most senior lineholder, you may as well not even bid, because you’re going to get what’s left over. Although, take that statement with a grain of salt. It’s hypothetical and generic. Republic uses preferential bidding, but that’s a whole different can of worms. For simplicity sake, just roll with it. In this example, it would have taken you 3 months to get a line.

So let’s take the same example and roll it into example C.

It’s the same set up as above. Company wants to maintain 10% of first officers as reserves. 10 people will get upgraded each month. This time, those 10 pilots will also be replaced. So you start off month one, number 93 out of 100. Month two, you’re 83 out of 100, and have a line. Not only would you have a line, but you’d also be able to outbid 8 other people. This is why having people below you is so important.

Longhornmaniac8

You can't just leave a system without any reserve coverage. Going off your numbering:

1. Will happen, whether YX wants it to or not. They can't do anything about this.

2. This will also happen, but management will control it and stop it if they need to.

3. True, but this is where you start to run into problems.

4. Unfilled reserve vacancies will never happen.

When #1 and #2 inevitably happen, the airline has no choice but to give up flying if there's nothing coming in at the bottom.

Reserve coverage is an operational necessity. X% of the each seat needs to be reserve, otherwise your performance metrics will plummet. If a pilot calls in sick, and you have no reserve, at some point a flight is getting canceled. In your hypothetical, with nothing flowing into to refill that reserve need, the only way to achieve that coverage at the levels they want is to shrink the airline. I'll illustrate it below.

Let's say there's 230 pilots in the airline, 100 CA and 130 FO, which reflects our current overstaffing situation on the FO side, with 25% reserve. 25 CA are reserve, and 33 FO are reserve.

50 CA leave through retirement and attrition. So 50 FOs upgrade, right?

Not really. Because then you have 100 CA and only 80 FOs, so we're not balanced.

To keep it balanced, you'd only upgrade 40, so now we have 90 CA and 90 FO. Note that our possible coverage has gone down by 10 pilots, because whereas before we had 100 CA, now we only have 90.

Of those 90 seats a side, 25% are still reserve, meaning 23 seats a side.

So if you're at the bottom of the list, you're now 90 out of 90, instead of 140 out of 140, meaning you're only 90 spots away from an upgrade (instead of 140). In that sense, you've moved up 50 spots. But because there's still 25% reserve, there will be 23 pilots on reserve, and you will be one of them. In that sense, you haven't moved up at all.

4V14T0R

In his scenario with attrition at the top and no growth at bottom you would shrink to be rightly staffed and upgrades would slow and maybe stop. Airplanes would be parked. Your situation wouldn’t get any better. This situation does not apply whatsoever to what is currently going on as we are still hiring and adding to the bottom.


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planesense

So if I’m understanding correctly, keeping a balance of CA and FO, as well as line vs. reserve, is paramount, even if that means canceling flights in an extreme case? I guess it’s better to not have the flight scheduled in the first place vs having to cancel at the last minute because the FO got sick, and there’s no reserve pilot to step in. Am I on the right track?

4V14T0R

That’s the dynamic of FFD. You gamble a little by accepting a contract to fly X amount of flights. I think you’re looking at it backwards. We are betting we can cover these flights. We can more than cover them. Currently we have about 4-500 more pilots than we need. Management is banking on more flying this year based on how much they are over staffed.


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TheWeatherman

Now you know the difference between a ****ty regional with horrible performance metrics and a good regional.

dera

GoJet/TSA used to fly CA's as FOs because of the misbalance you mention.
And Piedmont had negative reserve coverage.
So both situations do exist, but really aren't ideal to anyone.
Just like you guys mention. If you're at the bottom, you're at the bottom. You need people behind you to benefit from seniority.

Longhornmaniac8

Good points.

I should probably say that no airline will willingly choose to move people up at the expense of reserve coverage.

In extreme situations, it can happen, but it's not ideal, and I'd bet their performance metrics suffered.

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metalfeather

Can we conclude that, for FOs, holding a line requires new hires behind you, while getting a better line requires movement in front of you?

Now I want to spend some time in Comply to find how scheduling assigns trips to reserve pilots. There has to be a priority, preference or some other method to determine who is called first and who is last.

ninerdriver

Briefly: yes.