Maybe ours will be signed by 2028.

 

Hahaha. Retirements will start to peak at the legacies way before then. If we want to maintain our size or grow we’ll need butts in the seats and a way to attract them given our lack of widebody aircraft and faster upgrade. Stalling isn’t in managements best interest, IMO. Especially if the others sign significant gains and move the bar that much further.

 

Don’t you think that’s a big reason why we are overstaffed now? Get ahead of the legacy retirements and weather pronlonged contract negotiations? Bulk of the new hires have been hired 2015-2018. They are starting to throttle back on hiring. Come 2020 all will be off probation and unlikely to leave even if negotiations get nasty. Better sit back and plan on not seeing a new contract until 2025. I can wait.

 

My bet will be on a new TA to vote on by 1 Oct 2023. YMMV

Vote down the first one and get a second TA by 1 Oct 2024.

 

They're banking pilots (hedging, whatever) NOW to avoid having hiring pressure become a factor during contract negotiations.

 

By 2023 (I think) the big 3 are booting something like 700+ a year. Regionals are already hurting. It’s only going to get worse. Once LAX opens and HI starts we’ll normalize a bit I think. Is that enough to cover the next 3-5 years? Who knows.

 

Yes. Except I think any throttling is due to simple schedule shuffling to deal with upgrades and ETOPS. I'm convinced they'll bank as many pilots as possible.

filler

 

They're talking growth less than 5% and HI is 2.5-3%. With current retirement rates, you don't need 600-800 pilots per year to cover the "real" 2%ish growth rate over the next couple years. MAX may open up more international destinations to the South but then we'd be head to head with Spirit and others already doing that. I just don't see big growth ahead that matches our hiring rate. That's why I'm calling it a hedge or pilot bank. The hiring ahead of growth rates just gives the company a year or two buffer to drag out the contract while they try to break the union (like spirit and frontier), maybe even force it to arbitration. If F9 can't strike after the abuse they've suffered, we will never be released to strike no matter how good/bad things get. The pilot hedge just gives the company a few years to beat on us.

 

For the growth rate to be as low as 2%, you'd need to see a large amount of 700 retirements, considering our MAX orders.

 

And I haven’t seen any release of parking older jets for a few more years. Something is in the works with the training center expansion, etc. Epuldnt surprise me to see red eyes start. Would need a 3rd rsv shift to cover it.