Im thinking about 3250 pilots with a fleet of 214. That's about 7 years down the road. That's a growth of 250 pilots per year, so probably hire 275 or so per year to keep up with retirements and attrition, maybe more.

And for those not currently on property; we have about 1450 pilots currently with a little less than 100 airplanes.

Word from the training department is yes 24 a month.

I thought maybe we would see some upgrade numbers to match new hire numbers post-contract but apparently not. Hiring 48/month and upgrading 24/month suggests we’re still losing FOs to other airlines (or in rare cases by failure in new-hire training) at a sizable rate.

How is that? At the end of that scenario we gained 24 captains and 24 fo’s. We lost 24 fo’s to the upgrade. It’s never the same number.

So 24 is too many upgrades?

One big thing to consider is upgrade training is a lot shorter than newhire.

No, he just thought the reason we were hiring twice the new hires vs upgrades was because there was significant FO attrition to other airlines.

You can’t upgrade the same number you hire, at least not for long. If we hire 1,000 pilots and upgrade 1,000 pilots we would have 1,700 Captains and 700 First Officers, unless attrition is high.

When I look at the seniority list it appears we haven’t lost many FO’s. I expect to see upgrades that equal roughly half the new hire numbers.

Come on, cut him some slack. Math is hard.

You got me. Too many free beers. I even wrote 24 upgrades when I was thinking it was 12. Nope, it’s 24/month and that makes perfect sense sans alcohol.

Can’t fault a guy for getting their money’s worth at Wooley’s...cheers!