Hiring to Increase
 

From the MEC Update:

“New hire classes run weekly with the target of 65-75 pilots per class. The company plans to increase this number.”

Heard the new hire classrooms in the new H building can hold 150 pilots. It will be interesting to see what happens at other airlines as we hire many of their pilots away from them. I’m hearing stories from FOs about their friends at “Brand X” that were given a job offer but ended up turning it down because they didn’t want to “give up seniority” whatever that is supposed to mean. Not sure that the some of the other airlines will be able to staff their deliveries if we hire even more of their pilots than we currently are.

Seems like a lot of hype. Last I read the FAA is making all the airlines cut capacity at the 3 New York airport's because they don't have enough controllers. Can the infrastructure even handle all this UAL growth?

Read their post history. Obviously it’s a management hype-man or massive kool-aid drinker. Conveniently recent huge vacancies and this gets dropped after another disappointing update message from UA ALPA to it’s members. They use this to distract from the TA they’re currently negotiating, which is total garbage.

It’s becoming more apparent we’ll have to rely on AA for pattern bargaining.

Not sure how United is going to staff deliveries with so many unfilled CA vacancies…

You know United has other pilot bases, right?

This is a legitimate concern. It likely gets solved with improved reserve rules with a new contract. Otherwise there is going to be a lot of Premium Pay trips this summer for guppy Captains.

I do. I also know that it seems like the aerospace system can only handle a certain amount of planes flying around. So based on what your saying is that United's growth plan in the next five years will almost be like adding another airline to the system the size of SWA. Maybe it will happen, but the system seems overwhelmed in it's current state

If you look at United's "United Next" plan here:
https://ir.united.com/static-files/0...1-720e3d8d0e82

The plan is to up gauge aircraft.
"United Next will retire 200+ single cabin jets by 2026."
"Midwest hub departures on single-cabin regional jets: (ORD = 42%, but will be 4% estimated by 2026)
"Overall, single-class regional jets will go from 33% of North American departures to ~10%"
"Average domestic gauge grows by ~30 seats" (by 2026)
"‘United Next’ growth will primarily come from gauge"
"New generation large narrowbody aircraft provide significant fuel burn reduction": Fuel cost per seat (700 mile stage length) = $36 (50 seat RJ) vs $16 (MAX9)
"Newer aircraft are at least 50% more fuel efficient per seat than our least efficient fleets"


As NB aircraft are added, regional jets will be removed.

You know that we have 600 RJs that we are replacing with mainline planes, right? We will only fly 160 RJs by 2028 and the other 440 planes will be mainline. So 1 RJ job for 1 mainline United job.

That makes more sense. I guess the only constraint will be getting the next generation motivated to pursue a flying career.