Sept 17/18 class announced
 

Not sure if anyone has posted this on here, but Flight Ops announced another furlough return/new hire class for September:

"Flight Operations is pleased to announce that a furlough returnee/new-hire class will occur on September 17/18 for approximately 40 pilots.

Here is the current schedule of announced upcoming classes:
•August 20/21
•September 10/11
•September 17/18
•October 8/9"

I'll go out on a limb and, barring any major economic downturn, predict that we'll have 2 classes/month through the winter and spring.


United has a decent amount of growth planned so they'll need to hire for quite a while in order to staff that growth.

Typical United, this sucks....

Oops, my automatic forum reply was still in default mode. Great news!

I have my notifications set up to alert me when 100% premium pay trips hit open time, and SFO 737 FOs see some pretty consistent juicy trips advertised over the weekend, especially during the summer, but I haven’t seen anything like I’ve seen in the past two weeks:

Every. Single. Day... my phone dings with multiple 100% ADD pay trips we’ll into the middle of the week. I woke up this morning to three trips, one was a SFO-SMF trip, overnight, and DH back. 10 hours of pay at SRM, or 20 hours of straight pay for less than 1 hour of total flight time.

If that is any guide, we are severely understaffed.

Word on the street is it’s the new normal. Company is happy to run lean for 2-3 months of summer rush and throw money at pilots to go fly, vice being over staffed the other 9 months of the year. Given our operating metrics as of late (and the paychecks guys are raking in), everyone seems to be happy.

It is MUCH cheaper to throw money at current pilots than to hire additional pilots. The bean counters know this. Until we all call in fatigue, nobody calls in for PP or FAR 117 starts cancelling trips, the company won't change - its running very efficiently right now.

This...
While some pilots don't like to hear it, it's actually better to run an efficient company vs. one where everyone gets to drop as much flying as they want.
In my category, I have rarely seen SRM, though occasionally I have seen PPU at 50% and 100%.

Summer peak has come, and we survived. We will know in Oct how we did financially.. but I expect we did ok. Will some pilots have credited 150+ months, sure. But that won't be the norm.
Interestingly, I have been able to drop trips June, July and Aug. I have also picked up at the last minute and even gotten PPU.

Making money individually and as a company is what we should all be striving for. I do not want to see us become a 'jobs project' where we are more concerned with limiting the amount the pilots can make but forcing the company to hire more pilots.

It is a fine line~

Motch

balance
 

That line is fine. Wouldn't most like an earlier upgrade to Captain or bigger aircraft...
or the ability during the summer to slop at the trough, or wait on the corner turning trix.

Not at the expense of furloughs and downgrades when the inevitable next downturn occurs. What good is a Captain upgrade if I’m just worried about when I’ll be bumped back? Meanwhile I can do better than that as an FO with quality of life and schedule control.

Grumble, you are spot on with last two posts. Old ALPA always wanted Manpower Positive, which was old school. Today, all the airlines are running leaner and using SRM for efficiency. We have to follow the same tune. I try explaining this to the guys on the bottom 1500, that being fat, should worry them. After cuts of 2172, and 1472, I feel like everyone on the line is pretty safe for next economic downturn.