Insurance is all about how much money they want to spend, and if they need bodies in the seats, they can spend the money. The 1000 hours of 121 SIC or 135.243(a)/91(K) PIC time isn't going to change though, regulations aren't going to move.

I'll take that bet. The upgrade right now is over EIGHT years. Classes are full until June. Training can only handle 150 more upgrades this year (they might award more but classes are already a month behind what they wanted). There are almost 150 people who by-passed and there are still a hand full of XJ's from 2008. It is possible the next two awards could be filled just with pre-merger pilots who waited to upgrade. That would fill classes until the end of 2016 with upgrade at that point being close to 9 years. 2011 new hires will start to be awarded it for the new year which is still a 6 year upgrade. 1 year upgrades are not happening this year and even next year would be a huge stretch.

So what will happen when we start taking delivery of 175's this fall and 700's at some point in the next year?

The 175 will be a minimum of 4000 time in type to upgrade and will probably be the only true flow to Delta since it is an EOW aircraft.

Well that's not all true. We didn't hire anyone from the end of 2011-2014, so 8 years isn't accurate at all if they upgrade 150 more this year it will be into the 2014 hires!

wrong......

Yeah to say the least a one year upgrade is a long shot. The reality is somewhere in the middle around 2/3 years for the 2014/15 hires.

That's not considering fleet growth. None of which has been made official yet.

Then those 175's will be awfully tough to crew here since I don't believe anyone on property has 4000 in type and anyone off the street won't have the 1000 at the company. Good luck filling that first class of captains.... Care to talk a little more out the exhaust pipe?

Good counter point - do you happen to be on Trump's debate prep committee by chance?

They hired through most of 2011. The last 2011 new hire is at least 150 from upgrade, then all those that by-passed (maybe another 100 at least?). Without a bunch of new planes soon the upgrade will still be 6 years going into 2017. No arguing that it will go to 2014 soon after that but now you are looking into the second half of 2017. So a one year upgrade is a huge stretch - by the time those 2014 new hires are on the line it is still a 3-4 year upgrade. To say 1 year upgrades are right around the corner is a pretty big exaggeration. If new planes are announced then that all changes but even then it won't happen overnight.