Quitting a job is a decision to have with your family for sure. Only info that would mean anything on here or from Swapa forum would be legit time to hold whatever base you want (and even that is up in the air).

 

Lots of unscrambling to do after 18 mos of no hiring and hundreds of displacements. I’m sure by June, it’ll be just a couple mos to hold AUS or maybe right even out of training…just not there yet. As of now MDW is most jr base outside of the east coast.

 

March shows e199…and like was just said, it’s still going to double.

 

Those 2 are NH filling out their post training month in their preferred base. They weren’t included on the vacancy bid for March and those 2 are BWI based in April.

Base will grow fast before June and who knows if they’ll be back by then. There’s 500 people between them and the most jr. Could take 2 mos…could take 8…just depends where people want to go.

 

Back on topic.

MAX-7. Southwest publicly has stated expecting it to be in service early 2027. I have to imagine the confidence is high on certification in 2026, probably within the next few months. Will that trigger more hiring down the stretch? Or will they just replace the 700s 1:1?

 

from everything I read it’s mostly just 1:1 with some extra pilots needed due to the longer schedule they are flying now

 

Two things, I wouldn't have any expectation for the -7s until they are actually flying the line. The delay on this plane is insane. Secondly, it will likely be to replace the tired 700s with very minimal growth in fleet count. They've stated in the past they want to be an all Max fleet by 2031, that's 5 years to get rid of hundreds of airplanes.

 

I agree with this with the caveat that this unique fleet replacement strategy allows them some flexibility to grow airframes if it makes sense with out a lot of big capital expenditures. The Max 7 aircraft are being obtained at an extremely low cost (source - previous earnings calls) and the 700 aircraft that are going into 2027 have largely all been through costly heavy checks and many of them are getting interior refurbs. If it makes sense to keep capacity flat, they can retire old airframes. If it makes sense to keep operating 700 aircraft, they will have the flexibility to do that.

So who knows. It's a pretty interesting time right now. The economy keeps chugging along despite multiple things that would seem to be quite destabilizing in previous days. That's a good thing. I wouldn't believe anything you hear or see, though, until it actually happens since it can come to a screeching halt.

 

I mean they strategically moved all hiring forecasts to have all 800+ new hires on property by September. They did this because if the Max7 gets certified we can increase hiring in Q4 to bring us up to 1130 new hires for 2026. 1130 is our cap for the training center in 2026. They are hiring instructors to ramp up hiring for 2027 as long as the Max7 is certified. Current projections are it’ll be on the line by spring break 2027.

 

does anyone know why it takes 6 months to get it online after the first delivery? Why do we need to do proving runs because it has a different name than the max 8?
Is there more to it or all gov bureaucracy?