Class dates
 

How often are they? Monthly?
Dates for upcoming classes?
How many in each?

3-4 per month. I think they now start on Tuesday. Around 28 per class.

Hiring around 900 this year and 1000 next year.

494 hired this year so far, including the 7/18/17 class. Don't know how many of those are still employed at SWA.

Hiring projection from SWAPA shows 292 more new hire slots for the remainder of the year.

So it looks like it'll be close to 786 new hires for 2017.

Remaining New Hire Slots per month
AUG 2017 - 100
SEP 2017 - 48
OCT 2017 - 72
NOV 2017 - 48
DEC 2017 - 24

Any idea on Sept and Oct class dates?

Latest hiring projection from the training center is 915 for the year, they have added an additional class for Sept through Dec.

Ok so no known class dates for Sept and Oct yet?

Interesting they are ramping up hiring; right as we begin retiring the classics.
Hmmmmmmmmm....

Yup. The only thing that makes sense to me is a flood of red-eye flights (like a hundred per night off the West Coast).

Red eyes won't be ready till 2019

3 of the 4 Tuesday's in September and 4 of the 5 in October would be a pretty strong guess.

Thanks, looking forward to the concrete date!

Wow! 421 more new hires in the next 5 months. That's 85ish per month or a new hire class starting every week, minus the holiday weeks, through years end. Hope that means the upgrade numbers are increasing too.

what percentage do they run reserves at? Like 15%?

According to SWAPA they are running 24 upgrades per month, which isnt much but it does provide a trickle of movement. It will be interesting to see what upgrade time starts to look like in the next 3-5 years as the folks pushed down by the Airtran merger get their number called. As for Reserves, contractually its 8% of total lines with RSV lines being awarded along with hard lines on the 9th of every month.

"Pushed down from the AirTran merger"? When you have zero deliveries and growth scheduled, gain an average of 8% relative seniority by the "merger", "capture" ALL of our cptn seats, how can you claim to be "pushed down"?!

Let's keep the facts straight. GMAFB!!!!

I thought it was the AirTran guys he was referring to. LOL!

I'm still an FNG so it was more anecdotal on my part than anything. While I wasn't trying to place blame on either "group" my buddies whom were hired by SWA and reside in the 90K range all cite that one event(merger) as the cause of their 12-14 year upgrade.

My hope is lessons were learned from that experience.

Based on the growth numbers they are staying at the interviews. Some one starting today could be at 50% in 10 years.


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Why don't you go send a few cases of wine to your girl Claire. Without her you likely wouldn't even be on the bottom.

Class dates
 

Wait... let me stop laughing for a second and share with you some of the things I've been told during interviews, indocs, etc over the last 20 years or so.

- You're all going to be captains in 5 years
- We had to hire the best of the best because the upgrade time is so quick
- This is the last uniform that you will ever wear
- You just won the lottery
- Airlines don't furlough to profitability

https://media.giphy.com/media/QgixZj4y3TwnS/giphy.gif



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Here is a random newhire (hired last month). He has about 22 years until retirement. Based on retirements only, here is when he would reach 56% system seniority based on a 1% growth rate. Just short of January of 2030 - about 12.5 years.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...ebacd3873c.png


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Is 56% what's required to hold CA? Aren't there some who never upgrade, and of course others who retire prior to 65?

Cool. I was hired last year and have something like 1400 pilots beneath me; 1000 more in 2017, 1000 more in 2018.

My point is, where are you coming up with 1% growth? Mail me that crystal ball of yours, too many factors.

A couple of ways. First, I looked at the annual report for the last few years. They typically advertise around 2-3% capacity growth. But remember, capacity growth doesn't necessarily mean more airplanes. The 737-800 holds about 19% more passengers than the 737-700 (or 300). So capacity growth CAN be transparent to pilots.

Here is an excerpt from the annual report.

"The Company currently plans to grow its 2017 available seat miles approximately 3.5 percent, year- over-year, with approximately 2.5 points of that increase relating to domestic growth."

Secondly, I figured the company would eventually max out at between 10,000 and 11,000 pilots. (Speculating based on the number of pilots at mature carriers like AA, DAL, UA that have reached the limits of their growth) So 1% growth over the next 22 years would yield around 11,000 pilots. Granted we might reach that number sooner, which would naturally alter how quickly someone reaches that percentage.

It's all a wag. Nobody has a crystal ball. (I was forecast to retire number 1 at Legacy Brand X when I was hired there 18 years ago. Stuff happens) But I think it is responsible to use a conservative model to forecast upgrade when you're making your decision about where to apply. 1% growth is certainly modest and conservative. No way to know how many pilots actually make it to age 65 or punch out early. As the group ages and more pilots earn 5 weeks of vacation per year (at least 15 weeks with overlap corrections) it will alter the staffing model too.

But anyway... that's how I got the number I used for our little pencil to paper example of how long upgrade COULD take for someone hired today.




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Just for the heck of it, here is the same guy with a projected upgrade at 60% and 3% growth per year. It's at least fair to look at both projections.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...704e5a64e7.png


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Fair enough. It's all timing...

Thank you for posting, it's good info regardless.

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Good info by all (except Whack, let it go dude). Zap always has a very realistic and reality based outlook. His crystal ball sucks a lot less than mine.
A wag of about 10 years to upgrade for someone hired now is pretty close imo. The 5 year numbers that I have heard recently coming out of the training center are a complete fabrication and there is just no way it can happen.
As long as the economy keeps ticking along, I suspect we will grow slightly more than projected in the annual report just like we have over the last 3-4 years.
Of course, age 67, another merger, an economic downturn, etc can throw the proverbial wrench in all of this.
If it doesn't happen then oh well. Being a FO here is not a bad gig as long as you aren't wound too tight. I don't base my happiness on which seat I sit in (BTDT just like everyone else here) and to do so is foolish IMO.

True. It's all in how you look at it. I have an 11 year old boy, so I have made the commitment to my family that EVEN IF upgrade were available today, I would not bid it until he graduates from high school.

Why? Because seniority in the right seat insures that I will be able to be home for all of the ball games, karate tournaments, father and son potato sack races, science fairs, graduations, dances, etc. Hopefully it means I'll be able to get some summer vacations before he is too old to think vacationing with the parents is cool. It means if I can't be off on Christmas, I can sure as heck get home Christmas morning before the family even changes out of their pajamas. And on July 4th I'll be home long before the fireworks start.

If you add up all of the places I've worked, I've been a copilot for about 19 years. I don't own an airplane or a boat. I don't have a pool with a grotto. But we do ok. And all of the toys in the world isn't worth being gone for all of the "firsts" that you experience being a parent.

It also makes it so I have zero stress about a lengthy upgrade time. If we're at Delta today, there is no way I'd be bidding one of those junior Captain positions. Any position that 6000 FOs say "eh... thanks anyway" I probably don't want anyway!

So on the off chance that an upgrade becomes available before around May 2024, you can count on me bypassing it.




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Personally, I don't use myseniority.com for anything other than domicile seniority snapshot. We are hiring far too many for this to show any accurate information using 1-2% numbers. Besides, these percentage points aren't referring to the airline growth, they're referring to our seniority list growth. Until that stabilizes, it's anyone's guess.

Here's what I do, and maybe some math major can correct me, but I take a WAG on total pilots on seniority list by a specific date in near future and then adjust growth rate to meet that number, and take a snapshot. For example, I've heard things like 11,000 pilots by 2020. I guestimate the growth rate until a date chosen on that chart matches with around 11,000 pilots, then you can have some idea of where you'll stand if that happens at that point.

One thing is for sure - timing is everything.

^^^This^^^

If you run the numbers and the company hires the 950 they're claiming to this year plus a thousand next year, we'll be just a touch over 10,000 by the end of 2018 after subtracting out the retirements left this year and all of next year.

And I still won't be able to hold summer vacation! [emoji23]


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Quit whining! You're a socialist! You just want what I earned! Rabble rabble!

Class dates
 

http://gph.is/1dFR3GF


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Weren't we supposed to be voting on whether or not to get rid of block bidding vacations?

We are in Nov.


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Block bidding two weeks max per round seems like a fair compromise to me.

Since just about everything that AirTran did was better than what SWA does they should do the vacation bidding the way AirTran did it. One round of biddiding done by pure seniority, at least AirTran didn't do block bids.