Gents,


Anyone know why the company is shrinking the DCA 737FO category?

In earlier vacancy bids, we had a max of 280 in the category. We now have 265. Although this is just one BES slot, are there any other bases/slots where this is happening?

Dont know for sure but perhaps DCA ended up with a surplus during the timeframe that Ual agreed to draw down traffic in ewr to alleviate congestion, delays and political pressure. We needed the crews just the same. So planning put em in DCA for the duration. I don’t know. Just spitballing.

It’s not necessarily a shrinking, more likely the company wants to avoid secondary vacancies as they see a temporary reduction in need compared to other bases. The Min/Max bulletins shows exactly where these are focused- it looks like they’re even bolded. This happens across the board throughout vacancy season and before you know it they’ll offer 50 vacancies. Not something to get too spun up about in the short term. 15/280 is very minor.

Edit to add: look at DEN787FO; 118 down to 98. That’s fairly more significant.

Can more details be provided on the potential shrinking? I have a class date next month and live a couple hours south of DC. Was really looking at 737 DCA FO, are there still more slots than FO's currently there?

The details will be speculative at best.....you will get the drop in Indoc and then decide from there if you need to commute for a bit.

I assume you live near Richmond? If so, just grab Newark or Chicago in the initial drop and put in a standing bid and base trade request for DCA. It won’t take long to get, and in the meantime you won’t have to do the drive on 95 which is some consolation.

i live in Mechanicsville, and while the drive is preferable to me a flying commute is no big deal for a short while. Long term it would get old.

Interesting, thanks for your perspective. The DEN 787FO thing is similarly concerning. I guess what I was initially trying to get at is that they're shrinking BES categories without saying anything. 10-15 at a time isn't huge but if they keep doing it, before you know it, it will make a meaningful impact on people's QoL and seniority. All this can happen without displacement bids if they chip away at it.

I wish they'd post a Flight Ops briefing on what their intent is for each of the bases so we all had a better idea of what's actually going on.

Don't get tunnel vision on FO slots. Looking at CA slots is more instructive, DCA 737 CA holding steady at 301 this bid (vs 283 at the start of the last bid). Filling CA slots is tough right now, but the CO can easily send new hires to DCA 737 FO out of indoc. And yeah, similar things are happening at some other bases such a SFO - trying to grow to 250 737 CAs this bid. And yet, there are only 117 SFO 737 FOs to start this bid and no SFO 737 FO vacancies. That imbalance is clearly going to be filled with new hires.

It's also not shrinking, per se. It's just staying it's current size.

It was 283 positions in 2404V and now is 265 positions. That is shrinking.