I'd take a regional guy vs. a mil guy who's "traveled the globe". and smile on the TK bus.

 

Not necessarily... In my time as a 737 CA here, pretty steep learning curve from Mil to UAL. Not hard, just different and in my experience it takes some time for MOST not all of the mil guys. The mostly all end up being just fine, it just takes a bit to get into the groove of 121 ops

 

Not a UA captain….but at my last job as an ACMI captain….the same was true. The 20+ year Emirates Captains were terrible. Young go-getters were sharp.

 

This will not be implemented until Fall of '24 anyway - if you look at the implementation schedule, lots of things will happen before we start doing this. This gives everyone who is planning on applying to United the understanding that, and especially if they are young, they may get a CA award right out of training. If they still choose to apply and take a class date at United, they are well aware they may become accelerated pilots. Free will and choice is abundant here. Nobody is forcing people to apply to United, especially if they don't want to upgrade or have no prior PIC experience at a regional (which we are starting to see now). If we end up having applicants play Russian roulette with their first year here, knowing full well there was a chance they could be given a CA slot, then that's on them - nobody forced them to apply.

Just as a parallel, Delta has been upgrading 3.5 month new hires under the age of 25 into their 737s in JFK/LGA/EWR for years now. Heck, they had a 4 month upgrade on the Mad dog just prior to Covid with no 350 hour pre-requisite on Delta metal, no 100 hour OE, as long as they had the 1000 hours of 121 SIC which is a pre-requisite to upgrade at a 121 carrier.

You keep forgetting they still have to pass training, IOE, another full course, OE, FAA observations and so on and so on. Our training department is pretty good at weeding out people they feel have no business being in the left seat, if that is the case. The new TA also has a clause that nobody that gets short qual'ed can be accelerated, and this provides further protection to people's concerns.

Lots of people are talking about this being the poison pill of the TA - but we're a year away from this implementation, and whoever is on property at the time will have understood the provision and accepted it if they chose to come here.

 

I’ve seen it asked already though…..if you were one of the people who gets awarded a CA position in said circumstance…..couldn’t you just update your bid to NB FO in the meantime? Freeze doesn’t start until after the QLOE right?

 

Yes you could, as long as someone senior to you grabbed the CA upgrade slot you held in the subsequent vacancy bids. So, like you said, if you happen to be one of those people who gets awarded a CA position, you'll have at least 7-8 months (Training + 350 hours logged) to get someone to bump you off. Not sure how things will look end of '24 but - lots of opportunities to stay an FO if you truly wanted it.

 

Well if someone were to bid the captain vacancy while you were waiting for that award to activate then you would no longer be in the position to hold that “award”. But even if nobody does…..couldn’t you bid on an FO vacancy and be awarded it regardless? I mean…I don’t like this language. But it seems like a far fetched scenario that someone could actually be forced to upgrade. Just my caveman interpretation of it at the moment. Since the person in question had not completed the QLOE for the upgrade….there would be no freeze and therefore free to bid the seat they want/can hold.

 

Reading the TA it looks like it changes Freeze to start at award. So 24 month minimum lock into an forced award, with the only way someone getting out of it is failing in training (which may result in termination) or all unfilled Captain vacancies being filled prior to the forced awardee starting training.

 

no you would not be able to bid an FO position, freezes are now effective at award (not training start)

 

The company’s not stupid

They didn’t negotiate this so that new hires could be forced into captain then bid off it a month later.

United NEXT is 100% dependent on a supply of captains, and this secures it.