another bus vs 73 argument is (and this may depend on base), but I’ve heard the bus has far fewer commutable trips. Like, the 73 will have at least one end commutable, and the bus will have early start/late finish.

something to consider, and again, I’m just going off what others have told me. I haven’t studied the bid packages to verify.

 

True, but dont forget we are also going to be getting a lot of 321s soon and then XLRs after that so the bus certainly wont be stagnant.

 

wont be stagnant but in my opinion the trips on those will be equivalent to -400 trips, the most senior will get them.

 

At least in EWR, as a percentage of the trips in the bid packets, its about the same. About 6% either way. What one considers commutable, though, varies. I just looked at trips that start after 1400 and end before 1800.

 

How many total? In the hundreds? United is buying multiple hundreds of 737s, some 737 replacements, many not. How many 321s is United buying, and how many will replace other Buses? Looking at these two fleets, they are both expanding, but there’s no question which one is almost an order of magnitude more than the other.

 

% growth is more important than number of frames for seniority. Your seniority is going to improve more on a 100 frame fleet growing to 200 frames than a 400 frame fleet growing to 600 frames (just example numbers).

The bigger fleet does have the advantage of more open time churn though.

 

Your second paragraph betrays your first. A bigger fleet has the advantage of more open time churn and premium offerings BECAUSE seniority is more diluted, making an average seniority pilot relatively more senior.

 

No, they go hand in hand. Would you rather start at 100% and end up at 50% on a smaller fleet that doubles in size or start at 100% and end up at 75% on a bigger fleet that only increases by 1.5? There’s a lot of factors- do you want PP and schedule flexibility or do you want an acceptable schedule out of the gate? Do you sit close to the G line on the bigger fleet? What sort of trips do you want? It’s not as simple as pure number of frames.

I got a line months before my classmates that took the bigger fleet. Now that they’re at a higher seniority they have more flexibility but I don’t really need any of that flexibility at my seniority and I don’t pick up flying. It’s nuanced.

 

Most junior DOH for:

737 CA LAX
A320/321 CA LAX

Sorry. Wish I had a way to look this up myself.

 

Junior pilot on seniority list is about 16975
Junior pilot on LAX 737 CA is 16792 (total of 232 Captains hold the bid, but not all trained yet)
Junior pilot on LAX 320 CA is 15563 (total of 54 Captains hold the bid, but not all trained yet)

DOH doesn't mean too much in most cases but since everything is so junior on the NB Captain stuff it might have a little more meaning than normal. So, junior LAX 737 Cap was hired at the end of October. Junior LAX 320 Cap was hired sometime in May 23

In each case they are too junior to be trained yet. Current rule is 12 months and 500 hours at UA before starting training. That will change to 350 hours at UA (and no time limit) once a bunch of the contactual rules are finished being implemented (NLT Aug 24). At that point if the company excercises the right to start somebody in training after only 350 hours they can do so, but that pilot will require 100 hours of OE, so not too sure the company will ever do that??