First bid post signing they offered 330 nbca slots and 280 or so filled.

 

in my seat and base more than half the pilots on reserve bid it…..don’t be a commuter….

 

Pretty much.

Contract tweaks some of them but yet to be seen how much of actual improvement they’ll be in practice. UAL wont implement the full set until around August 2024.

 

I think the next couple of bids will tell a more accurate tale.

The last bid had some quality December training as your reward and with vacancy bids coming every month there is virtually no risk at waiting a month to avoid getting a training slot that you likely don't want. The training center is closed on Christmas Day, so you know you will have that off, but could work Christmas Eve morning and then have to be back on the morning of the 26th, that coupled with blowing up most of your other December plans make many not too interested in bidding for a new seat this time of year. Again, with all the 737s and 321s we have coming, there will be Captain bids coming every month so we will see if the January-March slots for training are more enticing.

As far as how long they will be on reserve, the conventional wisdom was that those that got 777/787 FO on the coasts in the summer of 22 were going to be on reserve "forever." Then 6 months later they were holding a line! So, conventional wisdom from us old guys about how long things are going to take to move has been grossly off for the last few years, enough so that I would definitely take the under on the "decade" estimate!!!!

 

Still might be a tough sell for some guys until vacation bidding for next year is completed.

 

The biggest issue is that we have so many wide bodies that people get a taste of life on crack and going back to the NB domestic grind isn’t worth the small difference in pay between WBFO and NBCA.

 

Bingo. And that’s a very tough nut to crack when WBFO is such a huge voting bloc. You raise NB captain pay significantly more than WBFO pay and they’ll revolt, you raise them both significantly and there’s still not enough difference in cash to make them give up the lifestyle. I think the year of PS commuting was an attempt at bridging that gap.

 

NC could have polled that question to get an estimate of the response. It would have been interesting for sure

 

side note, I’ve asked ALPA, and submitted multiple help hubs to different sections (they keep telling me to ask someone else, basically). Nobody seems to know how to “enroll” in the positive space for the year.

 

While there haven't been any forced upgrades yet, there are some who have chosen the "new hire upgrade" path who have questionable experience. There's one who failed his regional upgrade and probably has less than 100 hours of 121 PIC time. Most of these spots are going to the older folks in class due to the way new hire seniority is established (age). Age does not necessarily mean experience these days!