When does the next bid come out?

They are random. Contractually there only has to be 3 (maybe 4) per year. How they space them out is at their discretion.

Usually 3 months, but they break up winter into smaller bids due to training over the holidays (Jan Bid is a 1 month bid for December training). That seems to be the pattern over the last 3 years.

June vacancy posted.

Posted June vacancies:
G4 CA - 48
G4 FO - 55
G3 CA - 3
G3 FO - 20
G2 CA - 79

Last June was a big bid, not as big as this one. It saw Junior G2 CA drop 700 numbers. I expect G2 CA and G4 FO will both be 12,500-13,000 on this bid.

12,500 is a Feb 2016 hire. 13,000 is a Feb 2017 hire.

We’d be looking at as low as 3 years to upgrade, with it trending even quicker after that. Would be absolutely insane... hope you’re correct!

Why would it keep dropping? Honestly asking, from a mathematical standpoint. Sure, with increased retirements and hiring, the time it takes to reach that seniority will be much faster, so it would take a new hire much less time to reach, say, 12000 and widebody FO. But the only way really for those numbers to keep dropping would be adding more of those positions/airplanes or for some reason a particular bid status became less desirable for more senior pilots, thus dropping to junior ones. Again, lots of turnover in and of itself shouldn't really cause the number to drop, just cause the amount of time to reach that number to drop. What am I missing?

You're 100% correct. From a numbers perspective it will stabilize out of necessity, give or take a few. What may potentially drive it slightly further down temporarily is the combination of a June bid (prior to seniority reshuffle) in a year with a significant number of retirements.

I think your best indicator of the trend line is to see what the junior most numbers are each August, post shuffle

I would assume we are pretty close to stasis right now.

Agree completely.