like!.....

Well I for one feel horribly for the company. There was an extremely narrow money grab window and they really blew it. Makes me wonder what other opportunities they are missing out on.

Just talked to a buddy today who’s in fear of getting recalled. He took some time off to get into adult entertainment and was doing quite well until the stress of getting recalled has rendered him virtually useless for said occupation.

It will be years before we have a contract. It will first go through the usual meetings with the company negotiators. Then it will impasse, then file for mediation. Then that will go through a long drawn out process. With the mediator working to get both sides to agree on things etc. You will see them agree on usual net zero costs on different chapters in our contract but other parts not so much. Also right now no mediator is going to side with a union in this market. So my expectations of a current contract in the next 5 years is pretty low. This is my 3rd airline and one thing is for sure the RLA is design to be a long drawn out process. What we can hope for a is a strong recovery, return of the business traveler which still represents a 3rd of our business. Until that happens and profits start to flow in strong we are ........! The only airline that doesn’t rely on any business traveler are the ULCC’s.

Contracf 2020?! Pfffft. More like Contract 2025-26 “ish”.

I know one thing. I’m gonna need a big ass pay raise to keep my buying power with the coming inflation.

There's our resident Eeyore! :D

So... I've also been playing with some numbers. So assuming present time to 59% seniority (plug captain), 0 growth in seniority numbers meaning we only hire to replace the attrition, puts the upgrade at just short of 11 years on the property for my class. Do you really believe that we will not expand at all?

I get that I'm younger within company than most of you, so maybe not as jaded yet, but I think you guys are crazy if you don't think we don't grow in the next 2-3 years. We've added 17(?) new cities in the last 6-9 months and flights are already filling up. I realize we still have parked jets, but those are already coming out of storage in addition to new MAXs coming straight from the factory. I was hired after the MAX was grounded, so I've never seen the "old days" when premium was a normalish thing, but the schedule this month is something I've never seen before. There are tons of black trips in GA with no takers. If we recall pilots back to keep this pace, I don't see how to don't start hiring next year and expand the seniority list past the ~9800 or whatever it was pre-pandemic. The only thing that could stop us would be business travel staying low, but that will lag normal travel and eventually come back to near normal levels.

No, but there's one place where your math and my math don't jive.

Its the 59% plug Captain. Around 1000 guys senior to me were bypassing upgrade a year ago for whatever reason.. lifestyle, commute, etc. (that's how my bid was set up too)

I'll bet you the Starbucks beverage of your choice that the vast majority of those will change their bid to first available now and for the foreseeable future. That extra 1000 guys is pretty substantial when you consider how few retirements we have every year. Adds at least 3 or 4 years (no growth)

I hope I'm wrong, I'd love to upgrade before I turn 50 and have a solid 15 years to pad my retirement, but unless something dramatic happens I just am not seeing the numbers to support that.

My own fault. I got here later in life than many of you.


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While I'm not expecting big numbers, I would bet more than a few of the 5-year ExTOers aren't going to come back.

And those 1000 or so who upgrade will be replaced by new and different bypass pilots so it will be a wash depending on where you are on the list.

That's my point - or at least my guess. I think the era of bypassing upgrade is going to fade - at least for a while as pilots who might have been holding out to get one more decent round of vacation, or waiting for the kids to graduate, suddenly realize they were locked out of the left seat (and associated pay raise) for much longer than they planned. So I (again guessing) foresee a scramble to the left seat and a bypass list that shrinks considerably.

Which is fine of course, were it not for the anemic rate of retirements over the next 5 years or so.

If there truly is expansion coming out of the back side of this thing, great. But I think even pre-Covid as we pushed past 10,000 pilots a lot of pilots were thinking, "I wonder how many pilots they ultimately want to have on property when the music stops?"


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