Shrinking DCA base
 

Gents,


Anyone know why the company is shrinking the DCA 737FO category?

In earlier vacancy bids, we had a max of 280 in the category. We now have 265. Although this is just one BES slot, are there any other bases/slots where this is happening?

Dont know for sure but perhaps DCA ended up with a surplus during the timeframe that Ual agreed to draw down traffic in ewr to alleviate congestion, delays and political pressure. We needed the crews just the same. So planning put em in DCA for the duration. I don’t know. Just spitballing.

It’s not necessarily a shrinking, more likely the company wants to avoid secondary vacancies as they see a temporary reduction in need compared to other bases. The Min/Max bulletins shows exactly where these are focused- it looks like they’re even bolded. This happens across the board throughout vacancy season and before you know it they’ll offer 50 vacancies. Not something to get too spun up about in the short term. 15/280 is very minor.

Edit to add: look at DEN787FO; 118 down to 98. That’s fairly more significant.

Can more details be provided on the potential shrinking? I have a class date next month and live a couple hours south of DC. Was really looking at 737 DCA FO, are there still more slots than FO's currently there?

The details will be speculative at best.....you will get the drop in Indoc and then decide from there if you need to commute for a bit.

I assume you live near Richmond? If so, just grab Newark or Chicago in the initial drop and put in a standing bid and base trade request for DCA. It won’t take long to get, and in the meantime you won’t have to do the drive on 95 which is some consolation.

i live in Mechanicsville, and while the drive is preferable to me a flying commute is no big deal for a short while. Long term it would get old.

Interesting, thanks for your perspective. The DEN 787FO thing is similarly concerning. I guess what I was initially trying to get at is that they're shrinking BES categories without saying anything. 10-15 at a time isn't huge but if they keep doing it, before you know it, it will make a meaningful impact on people's QoL and seniority. All this can happen without displacement bids if they chip away at it.

I wish they'd post a Flight Ops briefing on what their intent is for each of the bases so we all had a better idea of what's actually going on.

Don't get tunnel vision on FO slots. Looking at CA slots is more instructive, DCA 737 CA holding steady at 301 this bid (vs 283 at the start of the last bid). Filling CA slots is tough right now, but the CO can easily send new hires to DCA 737 FO out of indoc. And yeah, similar things are happening at some other bases such a SFO - trying to grow to 250 737 CAs this bid. And yet, there are only 117 SFO 737 FOs to start this bid and no SFO 737 FO vacancies. That imbalance is clearly going to be filled with new hires.

It's also not shrinking, per se. It's just staying it's current size.

It was 283 positions in 2404V and now is 265 positions. That is shrinking.

It just won’t be backfilled, often that means it just stays the same, at least that’s how it’s been in ORD on some fleets

Music to my ears (mid April class date, hoping for SFO 737 CA)... Fingers crossed!

They don't have a clue beyond about six months, and I'm being extremely generous. Their plans could change in six weeks, and a change in six days wouldn't be unheard of, either. (I wish I was joking.)

they also do this to limit backfills. Like someone said, look at CA vacancies

It’s not shrinking on this vacancy, meaning max=min=# of active pilots. If they wanted to shrink it, the min would be a lower number to prevent secondary vacancies. It has been less than 200 at times and more than 300 over the last few years. Why those longer term trends happen is only a guess unless they tell us in a CRU.

And in 2404V DCA 737 CA opened at 276, now it is holding at 301. So overall that is more DCA 737 growth than shrinkage (sts). Until the company can narrow the much, much bigger CA/FO gaps elsewhere I wouldn't expect any big 737 FO vacancies in DCA. But, the base is not shrinking and is an obvious candidate for growth the next few years. This is because it has more currently available and upcoming additional capacity than any other hub besides maybe DEN.

Captain slots definitely tell the story in the longer term right now.

In SFO for instance, they know they will end up with a bunch of unfilled 737 Cap assignments , but they don't need to advertise the 737 FO assignments yet. This is because they will assign all the unfilled Captain assignments to New Hires that will end up being 737 FOs for the next year. When all of those folks become eligible to actually go to 737 Captain school (or actually slightly before) you will see a bunch of new hires getting 737 FO assignments in SFO to replace the upgrading pilots

nothing is shrinking….step back from the ledge….the company just wants to move the chess pieces where they want. They don’t want to have 787 training right now so they drop the FO level so there are no backfills. They don’t want IAH 737 FO to be undermanned by 100+ going into summer so they reduce DCA FO slots so there won’t be backfill.

If you haven’t been here long just relax as someone mentioned above they will post 50+ vacancies for DC when they are ready.

or they will be backfilling those FO slots with more new hire captains that start as FOs as prior new hire CA bid out making SFO FO hard to bid into? Going “senior”?

If you haven’t been here long just relax as someone mentioned above they will post 50+ vacancies for DC when they are ready.[/QU

Ok, trying to Relax, I got lost in the matrix but thanks for summing this up in pilot terms!

In Unity...

20 vacancies in 24-08 today, now showing 284 "min" and "max". Not shrinking (yes, not growing either). DCA 737 Cap holding pretty steady at 299.