Sr. Barco

Just passing along what I heard from a legit source in Flight Ops. It could be a planted rumor but supposedly the 1,000 TPIC requirement will be changed this year to 1,000 hours turbine time preferred.

I also heard the official new hire goal for 2017 is 780 and for 2018 it's 1,000.

ZapBrannigan

I'm flying with a check airman this week. I'll harass until he spills the beans.


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JDFlyer

I absolutely believe the information on new hires for next year. I also have heard directly from the training center that the 780 number for this year is limited by the capacity of our old training center that is going away this late summer/fall.

Once the new training center is fully functional later this year it will increase training and recurrent/AQP capacity by the number you mentioned, to accomodate 1000 new hires - and we will be maxing it out next year.

As for the TPIC requirement I have no idea. But I do believe a new age 67 retirement ruling is coming fairly quickly.

I am sure our line captains will just love flying with the newbies with no TPIC experience. They already complain as it is for not getting IOE pay for salvaging the new hire shenanigans coming from the right seat.

(No offense to the newbies, we were all there once.)

e6bpilot

It's mostly the captains that grew up in the old days that are complaining. Sorry I don't have 20,000 hours in an airplane that hates to descend and slow down that we put an arbitrary speed brake restriction on (every other carrier can use them up to flaps 5).
I was blessed to fly with some very cool, patient, and understanding captains my first year. Most of them were new captains themselves. A few go arounds and three years later and I think I almost have the hang of flying this contraption. Almost.

capt707

Because pilots with no TPIC time are worse pilots than pilots with TPIC time?

sailingfun

With SWA's manning levels and given the planned attrition this amount of hiring will require around 130 new airframes over the next 21 month assuming no airframe retirements. This is almost triple the last cooperate guidance on growth at SWA. Has their been a major change in the fleet plan?

Burton78

No one really knows. There definitely appears to be big plans behind the scenes that none of us line swine are privy to. All speculation and rumors at this stage point to an even higher utilization of our airframes, if that's even possible, or another type airframe announcement. Do we really need a brand new flight training facility that will be eventually able to house 26 737 sims? Makes one wonder.

1Taco

Perhaps they're gearing up to begin doing red eyes? Surely that would require more crews, no?

sailingfun

If they announced a new airframe today it would be doubtful they could get it into service before the end of 2018. Perhaps they are looking at all nighters to increase utilization.

Burton78

True. I'd guess this is the most likely scenario.