Tranquility

Presuming a static growth environment. Which we are not..... Do the math with our staffing requirements with an expanding model then you’ll see the potential problem.

Macjet

Probably because our attrition was not 25%. In fact, we grew the pilot ranks by 20% from the beginning of 2017 through today from 1500 to 1800 (round numbers).

400 hired? We didn't have 25% attrition there either. 100 left but not entirely from these 400 bodies. We had people leave that were hired in previous years so they aren't in that 400.

With 1800 on property and 100 leaving that is a YTD attrition of 5.3%. Not a good APC Thread Title but facts nonetheless. 25% attrition would be closer to 475 having left which would have shut the airline down.

FMGEC

New hire Attrition... or retention?

https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/retention-rate-vs-attrition-rate-24414.html

Macjet

According to this then our attrition is actually negative 20%.

The attrition rate shows the percentage of employees you lost for one reason or another and did not replace. If you started the year with 20 employees and finished it with 15, your attrition rate would be 25 percent.

So still, no where even close to (positive) 25%. To be such, we'd have to have started the year with 1500 pilots and ended with 1,125.

Planepirate

Wife? Is that you? I could swear that’s you, since you are making something that is so simple into a complicated cluster****** of a big deal. Lol.

I bet I know how Airlines figure out staffing. They look at their growth and the boss man says “we need 300 additional pilots next year”. Then another manager says, “we lost 100 last year and we anticipate that trend to continue” (they know there will be no contract and they share an evil chuckle). The boss man answers “Well let’s hire 400 then”

Macjet

Call it what you want but you are wrong. That's a fact. The OP tried to claim that our attrition was '25%'. I showed that it wasn't. Another tried to prove their case with a link that further showed our attrition wasn't '25%'. Now you're trying personal insults because you don't like the numbers. That's cool too but it doesn't make you right.

Our attrition is less that 5.5%. That is a FACT. Lying to try and improve our talking points gives you less credibility.

Now, additional facts are that our training department is running at capacity. That will require either an increase in training capacity, a reduction in growth, or an increase in retention. An additional fact is that the quality of our new hires is pretty poor. We are seeing an alarming number of guys fail training from all backgrounds but there is a trend with 2000 HR regional guys failing the program. This isn't a scare tactic to try and disturb the training pipeline but if you're a relatively low time guy you need to know that your peers are struggling and failing. Maybe you're the exception but you need to know that facts and weight the risk against your own career.

Super EZ E

You now don't need a ATP to get hired. People aren't showing up for new hire class it's a good percentage. I won't go down that path because the math NAZI will attack the process. LOL The training foot print is being changed because all of the issues. Fed isn't happy. Failure rate is to high!!

beech1980

To play the devils advocate... management loves attrition. It cuts expensive labor. They like having pilots on the low end of the pay scale. As long as the flights are not being cancelled it’s all gravy for them. Sun Country has high attrition as well. No problem as long as the flights go out. It’s managments dream to have a 2 year captain, new hire FO and 4 flight attendants working a flight off of IOE. Cheap labor= massive profits! It will only get fixed when it starts to hurt the stock and balance sheet...

balakay

Looking objectively, it appears there are really two sets of numbers that "should" be discussed. But as said earlier, and this is the way I have always heard it: "statistics lie and liars use statistics." The problem I'm seeing (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that we are using numbers muddled together. What should be, IMO, is two sets: What is the new hire attrition, and overall attrition.

If you are using a number for the amount of people being hired with a total number of people leaving (overall), that's where there the percentage is askew. I would want to know for all of the new hires (those still under a year seniority), how many of those have left within that same time period of within one year. That may paint a different picture as to is this place an intermediary stop before going to the legacy carriers (or SWA). JMHO

Macjet

I think you're absolutely correct along side with knowing our completion factor. I don't think our union has released a sufficient breakdown to know what the new hire (<365 days) attrition rate is. I would suspect that it is pretty high but I don't know for sure.