Urban Meyer stepping down at Florida Gators - ESPN

Christmas comes early for T!

I like that idea but you would have to phase it in. No way you would get the 777/747 captains to agree to a pay cut.

The other one is to have the carrier perform less of it flying. (Outsourcing)

Therefore, everyone needs to keep their eye on the ball and not sell one ounce of scope. It is a lot easier for DAL to only train the top end well the bottom end gets handed to DCI. If that does not happen, the need here for pilots becomes great.

T would probably prefer if the stadium imploded during the Florida-Georgia game.

The company has in the past sustained hiring 100 pilots a month. With the addition of the NWA training facility they can handle the training easily. It will be even easier this time since so much of the training is home study. The company has had years where they retired 600 pilots. Its not that big of a deal for them. The biggest problem is that when you get into a major hiring surge or retirement window you need to pre hire extra pilots to account for those in school. With the home study that need will be less but still a issue. I suspect that is factored into hiring plans for the next 2 or 3 years. They have to build a cushion for the coming retirements. That number used to be about 10 percent. With home study a conservative number will require about 5 to 7 percent more bodies when they get into a big training cycle. It could be as high as 8 percent. That is a lot of extra jobs at a airline this size.
The downside to the extra bodies is that furloughs often follow when hiring stops and they don't need the bodies. In this case however the volume of retirements is so deep that it should not become a issue.
As far as PRP's like they had in the year they retired 600 plus pilots it is not a player this time. When that happened Delta pilots had a retirement. Former Delta pilots are 100 percent divorced from the company for retirement purposes. There would be no point in a PRP program for them. If they want to work longer simply don't retire. The PRP's were able to retire and draw their retirement and a working salary. Can't happen now with the exception of former NWA pilots. They could be used in a PRP mode however I don't really think the company will need it. Not all retiring pilots got into the PRP program and off those who did if you exclude the check airman the average PRP flew only 6 additional weeks.

They could also create additional efficiencies by:

1) Not putting a pilot through CQ a month before they go to an intial on a new airframe - fly them into a grace month or even (gasp) bench them for a few weeks.

2) Combine training and standards into a single training department and to streamline training and eliminate redundancies. Everyone else in the biz does.

3) Have more than one individual for a 12000 plot airline schedule OE and train more LCP's. Seems like a month from GS to OE is pretty common.

4) Change structure of IP's to have them do both Sim and LCP on a rotating basis, ex. 3 months in the Sims, 3 months on the line. Takes care of the whole seperate training/standards thing. Have a larger cadre of dual qualified instructors, and provide them with incentives that attract to the position: pos space to work, hotels, and an override.

I know, I know - if there was a better way we would have thought of it already

Talking to my buds that have gone the ER recently the OE scheduling is not a best practice. I know it is a huge fleet and they need both domestic and int'l legs but it has to get more efficient.

Is it less airframes since the merger?

It depends on your fleet. On the 330 side everyone has been getting OEs 2-4 days after GS. My wife wasn't thrilled that after 31 days of school I only had 2 days off before going on a 7 day trip.

Yes, since the date of "Constructive Notice." the number of DCI airframes has fallen by more than 60 jets. I suspect those in 44 will see more about this from their Sec/Tres.

I was referring more to 76 seat and above. It is my assertion that the 76 seat and below market will be a very small segment of the domestic lift by 2020. Keep the line where it is at, and DCI will shrink appreciably.