But I'd get another Battle Star......which is nice.

 

Emirates is now flying to FLL. Looks like a big reception in terminal 4. That airport just loved to attract trade agreement violators.

 

I think I read somewhere that the Canadian jet the company is looking at has the same type of P/W high bypass engine it's just de-rated to put out less thrust. I'm sure the clowns that run this place will be announcing a large purchase order for the CJ any day now. More very quiet (afraid to start them) jets added to the fleet. Way to go and more high fives!

 

Anyone else see these bullets in the November investor overview slides?

Slide 16, Cost Advantage Drivers:
• “Juniority” benefit
• Adding new flight crew members mitigates inflationary unit cost pressures of an aging workforce

Slide 17, Costs Expected to Trend Lower; Unit cost tailwinds are expected to come from::
• Salaries, wages, & benefits
• On a per ASM basis, “juniority” benefit helps mitigate inflationary cost pressures

So basically they're telling investors they expect to keep hiring new guys, we hope the senior guys keep quitting before they get expensive, and low pay will continue for the foreseeable future. Once again, nice to confirm where they're headed and their expectations on negotiations. And double-nice to know they really don't mind high hire/quit churn and would rather keep training up new bus pilots than make any attempt to keep the ones they've already trained.

I'm sure the chief pilots are thrilled by this mgt priority focus, since everyone quitting as soon as possible is such a big part of their business plan, it now gets 4 bullets on 2 separate investor slides.

Maybe company mgt is actually encouraging the ALPA career seminars? That would be funny.

 

Let them think that this pilot shortage isn't going to affect them eventually. If they are really taking that approach, then they just encouraged the remaining pilots on the fence on leaving. This place is a joke!

 

I believe they are referring to new hires, not necessarily attrition from CAs leaving. Let's be serious here, it's the $136 hr CAs leaving that are being replaced by $131hr ones, not our $185/hr CAs leaving. They can only Bull**** the investors for so long. Junior CAs leaving doesn't really help them.

Of course we have the CAs that are willing to go down to third world type 6 days off to choke on the Spirit C---- for some of that gravy

 

Just flew with a grade A gravy choker! I wanted to smash my head against the window looking at his schedule.

 

They're churning junior FOs when they bail out to double their pay with a legacy just a few months after finishing OE, which seems like a waste of money. I haven't seen any numbers on what it really costs though, so maybe encouraging folks to quit results in an insignificant hit to their pilot workforce expenses.

Sure would be interesting if a big investor raised the point during an earnings call though. How many FOs and junior CAs quit to go to another airline each quarter, what does that churn cost in real $$$ each quarter, and what would the cost impact of meeting the contract ask be, for those same junior FOs and CAs. They must have that data, they're just not going to tell anyone unless a big investor forces them to.

 

My personal side-bet is that Delta and United both report a warning 2Q or 3Q next year that they are going to badly miss their hiring targets going forward. Not sure what they'll attribute the shortfall to, training capacity or "pilot shortage", but I think they'll have to bring it up during an earnings call if they don't meet the hiring targets they have already published and also fall short of their earnings targets. That could force some additional big changes across the industry, if the investors get spooked and pull their money out because they don't think the companies will be able to meet hiring targets for whatever reason.

That will risk another industry-wide breath holding competition, seeing who runs out of cash first and gets bought out just for their pilots.

 

It isn't a surprise, its confirmation of a mgt position that any hiring shortfalls are actually counted on as part of a cost saving measure. The slides also mentioned that they're leaving revenue growth on the table due to aircraft orders being insufficient to service all identified profitable markets/routes. That makes it reasonable to wonder if they're failing to report an impact on earnings growth due to not meeting hiring targets, in addition to not having enough aircraft on order (reference bottom line statements on slides 9 and 11).

Inquiring investors want to know this stuff