Yes, I heard of a rumor indirectly from a friend who had flown with a SAPA rep. They are working on a pay increase or something of that nature. I wouldn't hold my breath as the saying goes.... Would be nice though.

I think we will see another raise "shortly" as our current agreement is essentially expired at the end of 2017. If company wants to raise pay for pilots then things will happen quickly at the end of the year. If they are happy with recruitment and other things the possible raise could be a ways off.

I'd put my money on another minor raise.

The ppm doesn't expire till July 2018. It was a 3 year deal. If the company wants to come and renegotiate then that is up to them, but recently they have make it clear they don't want to do that.

Rather take a pay increase to year 2+ than first years. But making $40/hr starting would probably increase classes even bigger....

Then again we don't have any troubles hiring right now. All classes are 30+ for consecutive months in a row, even with 2 running a month. (on the CRJ at least)

Can new hires pick their aircraft? How often are classes scheduled?

Yes but might affect your class date, ERJ is typically longer. Classes are every two weeks.

They also said that they would not raise pay when first year was $30/hr, low and behold they raised it to $36.50 even with classes were full so that they could stay competitive. Most regionals aside from Mesa, Horizon and Compass are paying more than we are anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if they were forced to negotiate something eventually, especially with upgrade times matching us at all the wholly owned carriers. What that will do to our remaining competitive, I have no idea.

Also, you get a 2 year seat lock with whatever you pick....But that could have changed it's been about 6 months since I did my interview. I heard they got rid of the "no preference"

I keep hearing they'll bump first year pay before they ever offer bonuses to everyone. Might just mean an extra 50 cents an hour. Who knows.

My understanding as well, you get to pick and you have a two-year lock. Only makes sense, training is expensive and loosing a pilot for four months is expensive.

There is no lock if you have the opportunity to upgrade. That's important because if upgrade times approach about 18 months, then they will likely jump much lower...like six months. Reason being all the CFI's don't have the required 121 time to upgrade, so people who had previous 121 time suddenly move to head of the line.