Per email today:

2019 Hiring 500+. Upgrades 400+

has anyone gotten travel info for the 10/2 class yet?

That’s great news!!!

Any idea how many folks who interviewed and were successful are still waiting for class dates? Was told 2018 was spoken for at the moment and if 2019 slows a bit for new-hires then are we looking at a pool?

Maybe someone with better knowledge can chime in. I understand that the requirements for AQP requires CA upgrades be paired with an FO (new hire). That may be why we are behind on upgrades so they can balance the load of upgrades and new hires??

We're not upgrading 1:1. Unless something's changed recently new hires are paired together in class. Upgrades do their own thing.

Correct. If you think about it, in a pure growth for fleet size model (what we are currently in) anyway, each upgrade would require two new hires, so you would never have a one for one scenario work out.

I did hear a from one of the training chiefs at one of our get-togethers that they are contemplating this in the future. Upgrades paired with a new -hire.

Just curious, I think it would be a challenge, but why do you require 2 NH for each upgrade? Traditionally, an airline carries more captains because of seniority/medical etc. Also, I would assume the footprint for upgrade is shorter than for initial so that would complicate it a bit.

If you wanna grow equally for both seats:
1 upgrade = -1 FO
You need 2 newhires to replace one upgraded FO to CA.
Example: you have 100 CAs and 100 FOs. You wanna increase staffing and end up with 150 of each. You upgrade 50 FOs to CAs. How many FOs do you need to hire to end up with 150?
Obviously that's easy math. I hope I didn't sound condescending. There are many variables like attrition, check airmen, non-flying positions, etc. I bet the math is more complicated, thus never exactly 1:2.

What I was told was that all classes have been filled for the rest of this year. Pilots without assigned class dates may get moved up to this year if a spot opens up.

We have reduced classes for the first quarter of next year so we can focus on upgrades and ETOPS. 1 class in Jan, 1 in Feb, & 1 in Mar, then multiple NH classes per month the rest of '19.

The training dept. has been told to plan for 550 NH's next year. That (official) number is expected to be 750-900ish just like last year and this year.

Still waiting on a few more (3 I think) sims to fill out the LEAD building. That will happen in '19. Immediately after that, work on extending the LEAD building begins.

Thats all I can remember.