Touché.

I do hope there’s more than 12 upgrades being awarded in Dec. 12 is underwhelming. I find no less than 18 to be the minimum acceptable level.

You know they are saying around 250 newhires per year, so I figure 125 upgrades? That's less than 12 a month. Doesn't sound like all that much. I wonder how many we ran in 2019? I believe it was very few. Less than 60?

Those numbers make more sense to me for the long term plan than 50 new hires per month. 250 new hires per year over the next 6 years adds 1500 total. That averages out to just under 21 per month. So half of that for Upgrades? Of course, more would have to be added for attrition. They would line up better with the fleet growth plans. As a poolie, I'd rather see more new hires and upgrades! The wait for a class date is not that fun.

Don’t get hung up on the “per month” forecasts. Our hiring and upgrades have always been paced off what’s happening TODAY and not what’s happening in the FUTURE. Based on the number of deliveries, the staffing and training needs over the summer, etc. The 50/month number is for the first part of the year. My guess is after May we won’t see a class (new hire or upgrade) for several months...fair warning to those that get CJO’s in April or May.

I’m not in the know but my guess is this most recent, random vacancy that doesn’t coincide with a new hire class is meant to staff a couple unplanned airplane deliveries i.e. Thomas Cook acquisitions. Then I would expect January-May 45-50 new hires and 24-ish upgrades. After that a drought lasting until fall.

That makes sense with the Thomas Cook deliveries and the slow downs in the summers. I can't imagine what it was like waiting in the pool as long as the Spring hires. Either way, it is nice to see that volume of me hires coming through. Does anybody have a rough idea of what the training footprint will be like with the new home study section?

The plan is around 1.5 weeks of indoc before sending you home. That gives enough time to get the HR and general company policy stuff out of the way. At home you’ll do computer based training on aircraft systems for another couple weeks. Then they’ll drag you back for around 3 weeks of CBT, sims, oral, check ride and LOFT.

When the “plan” is put into action is a moving target.

Thanks for the info Powder!

The last few posts on here regarding hiring numbers are correct.

Our long term hiring should result in around 250 pilots per year added to the seniority list. When you factor in retirements and attrition, you could probably assume we will hire 275ish? per year for the next 5+ years. Our management and training dept says we are going to run multiple classes of 48 for the next few months, so I can just about guarantee that we will stop hiring over the summer months (as we have done every summer).

The other thing that I can guarantee you is this: when we stop hiring during the summer, everyone will freak out, claim the sky is falling, and say the company is lying to us. Happens every summer. 48/ month is way beyond what we need consistently.

Ain't that the truth! Short attention span theater anyone?

Okay, perfect! I'll be sure to go into full panic mode as soon as the summer slump starts.