I still think the ETOPS seat locks are the monkey wrench. No telling how those are going to impact bidding behavior.

 

Now that's what I'm talking about! Especially when it comes with the side of Eeyore tears because he paid for it since he lost the bet.

 

What’s the original bet?

 

Does the seat lock apply if the entire base is ETOPS?
What if you’re already ETOPS qualified going into upgrade, is there a seat lock in that case?

 

Yes

No

The seat lock is silly at this point. It should really be abolished in the new contract. It used to be one and a half small bases and a pain to get the training done. Now they are training tons of folks who won't even fly any ETOPS and don't have the lock.

 

I believe as long as Premium time remains relatively accessible, the upgrade time will drop. We have A LOT of FO’s here that will not commute to the west coast and a large subset of those that will not upgrade until they can upgrade in base or upgrade in a VERY easy commute. Count me in the later. As long as we have the ability to make $250k+ by working hard and driving to work, we won’t put our bodies and personal lives through a commute lifestyle.

The big unknown for SW is how quickly we can wrap up training, resulting in expanded operations and additional upgrades. An extra 200-300 upgrades held back because of training limitations will have a huge impact on the expansion and upgrade time over time.

My bet is we see the upgrade fall to probably 8 years (for west coast bases only) with larger numbers than ever bypassing.

 

I think you're just locked into any ETOPS base for 6 months following ETOPS training.

But let's say you commute from BWI and you take first available upgrade in OAK. Now you're basically stuck in OAK, LAX, or LAS for six months gambling that you wouldn't be able to hold anything further East in the next 6 bid periods.

 

Count me as part of that group. Vegas is as far west as I would go.

 

Is that because that's the furthest West nonstop commute from your city?

Next question is how long is the lock if you voluntarily downgrade?

Might be fun to upgrade and try out some Hawaii flying and then, if the commute is a bigger pain in the butt than expected, downgrade and go back to living the senior life for another year or two.

 

now that's a very interesting question