You're smoking something powerful if you think unfilled Captain vacancies will be an issue in our next section 6 negotiation. There's a better than 50/50 chance that out next negotiation will be with the proverbial gun to our head. Even if not, we won't see a serious push for an AIP inside of 7 years. Either through growth or contraction, we will have no trouble filling Captain vacancies at that time.

Assuming this TA gets ratified, the next contract won’t be for six years or so. The hiring wave to staff the United Next expansion will be complete, the seniority list will be what ever size it turns out to be, and hiring will continue only to cover attrition. Seniority progression and captain vacancies will go back to normal levels and unfilled slots will be a thing of the past.

if Kirby can’t fill the vacancies he will be forced to come to the table with a LOA or something to get that addressed. He’s not going to be like “oh well” let’s cancel airplanes deliveries. we giving all that leverage away.

Have you even bothered to look at how many unfilled CA seats there are on the current vacancy bid?

35…for anybody who is too lazy to check. Seems much lower than recent past. And we don’t even have a TA voted in yet.

Interestingly enough there are also quite a few WB FOs taking the upgrade to NB CA… at least more than I’ve seen in recent pre-TA vacancies

OH NO! More newhires will be forced into WB FO. That sounds unsafe. /s

You're making some huge assumptions here.

For anyone who didn’t watch the live broadcast it’s available on the website. I appreciated GT speaking candidly about how this policy developed over time. It started at management’s request for direct “street to seat” NH captains & worked its way down to what it is today. From his telling, it certainly seemed this was the company’s primary driver to get a deal done.

GT said something to the effect of “People have said if the improvements are sufficient why the need for forcing upgrades, which, exactly.” I wasn’t sure whether that meant he shared frustration over the company’s insistence, or if he thought the proposed improvements were sufficient to render it a non-issue; but I got the sense that it was an 11th hour “make or break” demand by the company. Like, “Okay we gave you something but we’re gonna need an insurance policy.”

So it’s undeniable that this is a powerful motivator & a huge bargaining chip that was pushing the company to get a deal. Did we get fair value for it, or could we have smoked the company out? It’s as much a matter of opinion as whether we could get a better offer by voting no, or what the 10-year impact of this decision are actually going to be.

well of course…. But allowing forced captn eliminates any leverage. At least we would have a chance at good leverage if the United “next” pans out.