Yes, because we are now more efficient, and lots of senior manning, picking up extra flying.

You can only get so much blood from the turnip.

 

The easyjet airplanes are coming, there was a temporary snag with the German govt as I heard it.

As far as numbers, add in total retirements over that same period of time, what’s that number?

 

Yesterday morning. You may be getting the Easy Jet and Air Berlin deals confused.

Here’s the website if you aren’t familiar. Pretty interesting stuff.
https://sites.google.com/site/united...fleet-tracking

 

So a few things here.

First of all, using the numbers on the SLI are not relevant. There were a couple hundred pilots on the SLI who were already retired. Its because of the time from when we got a joint contract to when the SLI was actually done. Also, more than 600 pilots on the list were just placeholders because they weren’t really on the property. They were on various leaves/furloughs/etc. Also we had 2 training centers still, pilot groups flying separately, and other redundancies that have been corrected. We didn’t have 12,155 active pilots. We had much closer to 11,000 - 11,500 total active pilots. Each year, as furloughed pilots came back, pilots from leaves came back, etc the number didn’t change, even though this was a “new pilot” coming back to flying. Just looking at the last number on the SLI isn’t an accurate look at total pilot headcount.

Today we are up about 1,000 pilots in total actual headcount.

I totally get it. Its easy to look just at the total number of pilots. We want to make decisions with as little information as possible. So its just easy to look at the “total seniority list number” and use that as the benchmark, which doesn’t work when you furloughed 1,700 pilots from two airlines, not to mention the hundreds more that were on military leaves, etc.

Just look around. We are a MUCH BIGGER airline than we were at the merger. Its not even close its so obvious.

 

Well out of those 12155 pilots on the SLI 1500 of them were on furlough so that’s 10600 active not including those already retired and the inefficiencies a merger causes. Now we have close to 12000 active so we have grown atleast 1400 pilots and streamlined our operations.

 

Guess we'll agree to disagree.
There are many metrics to use in determining growth (or shrinkage) of our airline.

Yes, I believe that when you look at what number the junior pilot is on the list then and now, you get a good indication of the size of our pilot group and if we have grown or not. (Not talking utilization.. purely pilot staffing numbers)



Using JY who was 12155 at SLI, he is now 9814 (based on Jan Staffing).
That means that in roughly 6 years, he has moved up 2341 numbers.
Thats a ton of guys who have retired (congrats) Passed away (condolences) or been let go (?).
Pretty good numbers.

At the same time, the current bottom guy sits at 12542 which mean there are 2728 pilots that have been hired AFTER the SLI.

Spin it any way you want to, but from a purely manpower Seniority list, we have increased our numbers by 387 pilots.

Maybe we need to differentiate 'growth'.
How many mainline aircraft did we have at SLI vs. today.
How many WB aircraft did we have at SLI vs. today.
How many passengers did we move then vs. now?
How many miles did we fly then vs. now?


I totally get the min.max vs active pilots when they put out a bid.
We still have 'place holders' who will have to decide if they are coming back sometime within the next year, I believe (200ish?).
If those 200 come back, and 200 retire off the list, our list will actually shrink. Not grow.

But it really doesn't matter.. just waste of electrons here.. as long as we are retiring pilots, we need pilots in the training pipeline to keep the machine running.
As long as we are also getting new aircraft that are not CURRENTLY replacement aircraft, we need to grow our airline pilot numbers.

Welcome New Hires!

Someone had a graph on here (a while back) that showed how many we had hired since SLI, and how many had retired. I thought there was a year (or 2) where we retired more than we hired.
Also, there were months where we didn't hire but were still retiring pilots. Only ones coming back were Mil Leave guys/gals and LTD's.

Motch

 

You aren’t using manpower numbers. You are using a list that other posters have rightly pointed out included retired pilots and guys who never came back.

 

JY may have been 12155, but that was only out of about 11,000 active pilots. Remember the whole “active pilot” and “didn’t bring a job to the merger” argument from years ago? So you can’t say we had 12,155 “pilot jobs” because we didn’t.

Your math does not count every single pilot who was furloughed, mil leave, or personal leave and then came back. 100% of those pilots are ahead of JY on the seniority list, so from his perspective, them coming back didn’t help him because they were senior to him. You have to add those back in and you’ll be closer to the actual growth number by pilots.

The SLI wasn’t a staffing document, so using those numbers won’t work. We were growing, but not by putting people on the bottom of the seniority list. We grew by putting back pilots in the middle of the list from various leaves/furloughs.

I’m surprised Sunvox hasn’t come on here with an exact count, because he’s pretty good at figuring these things out and explaining them.

 

Guys.. lets cut to the chase.
Which Pilot seniority list should we use to determine how many pilots were considered to be United Pilots, by both the Union(s) and the company.

On top of that, are you now saying that the list that both unions used for SLI was incorrect and inflated?!

I have the Company/Union Seniority Lists that are posted on Flying Together for the following years.

1 July 2014 - 12159
1 July 2015 - 12415
1 July 2016 - 12778
1 July 2017 - 12817
1 July 2018 - 12645

And like I posted earlier,
1 Jan 2019 - 12542 (using Staffing on CCS, FO)

You can argue what you want, but we use the yearly 1 July Seniority List to show pilots who are on our official United Pilot Seniority List.
On top of that-
United Seniority Progression


Great site to figure out where you are and where you should end..
It's constantly using the updated Staffing page to figure out seniority.
My number is usually within a few numbers between his site, the Staffing page, the vacancy bid screen and PBS screen.

Look, at the end of the day I believe you call 'growth' the increase in pilots from a set day. To me, it's the SLI.
But even if you want to use the 1 July 2014 list, we had 12159 on the list and now we have between 12645 and 12542 pilots.

Either way to look at it, our list has increased between 383 and 486 pilots.
Better than a decrease or stagnation... but there is no way you can say that we grew by 1400. Just because a furloughed/mil leave/LTD pilot came back to work you can't say it's growth! They were on the list to begin with.

Also, how many pilots have gone OUT on mil leave/LTD since SLI?!

I remember guys typing how we would have 14000, 16000 even 18000 pilots on 'our list' by 2018. I laughed then, and I'm just pointing out that due to efficiency of crew scheduling, yes.. our active pilots may have grown to cover more of the flying we are doing but -
If we were to look at purchasing JetBlue in 2019 (as an example), we are going to use a list that shows how many pilots are on the United Airlines Seniority List at time of merger. Won't matter if they are active or not. If they are on a list, they are United Pilots.

Also, if you want to talk Active - Min/Max from the latest Bid-
1903V 11084 11000/11356

And a bunch of older bids...

1902V 11085 10938/11360
1901V 10986 10691/11091
1812V 11015 10843/11192
1810V 11013 10766/11348
1806V 11029 10755/11106
1707V 11170 10308/11214
1704V 11030 10700/11419
1606V 10920 10770/11147

Unfortunately I don't have the Vacancy announcements from earlier times, maybe someone else does.
But at the end of the day, I believe we have grown our pilot force by less than a hundred pilots a year.

I stand by my statement.

Motch

 

Everything you say is correct Motch, I just don't think most people understand why you are hung up on the United pilot seniority list number not increasing. For me these two pictures show what is important . . . in the last 5 years I went from 6400 to 4500 and that was 300 numbers faster than predicted. In EWR I went from 90% as an A320 Captain to 25%, and based on the bids these last couple months, it looks like we're just getting started. Not to mention that we grew the fleet from 693 planes at the end of 2013 to 768 planes at the end of 2017. That's 2% fleet growth per year and again looks like the future is even better . . . at least for now