I mean, it is right there in the snapshot. 30 320/737 captains bidding out, 0 737/320 captain slots awarded, 15 75/76 captains bidding out, 5 captain slots awarded. I never said displaced.

 

This has been explained on NUMEROUS town halls by crew resources. The MIN/MAX is how they control training. Nothing else. Its not long term staffing. If they don't want to create narrowbody or other training cycles in the summer, they don't allow backfills, then in a few months they will post a bunch of bids to fill fall training slots. The fact that they didn't backfill is a result of limiting training and nothing else.

This bid was mostly just to fill 787 CA slots, as was mentioned in a previous Crew Resources Update. Obviously this could have created a lot of Captain upgrades in 756 737 and Airbus so they just artificially lower the min so there are no backfills.

If you look at the MIN vs total current staffing we appear to be overstaffed by 200 Captains. We are not.

As has been famously said in the past "I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you"

 

Well, it's the first time I've had it explained to me - so thanks for breaking it down for the ignorant.

 

crew resources has also said, in a recent CR update that they do use min/max to facilitate attrition when they wish to shrink a category

 

Absolutely correct.

But this is not because we are overstaffed in 787 FO in "all the bases" and they want to have exactly 5 FOs of attrition in a bunch of bases (oddly the exact same number). Just last month they allowed a bunch of backfills into 787 FO in 3 different bases. One base would have had backfills because the min and max were the same, but no one left. The only base significantly overstaffed was EWR but a ton of FOs bid out. This month they backed off those numbers to restrict training. If they had too many 787 FOs they would have cancelled the awards they literally just gave a few weeks ago in the vacancy bid, which they can do under the contract. They didn't because we aren't overstaffed on the 787. This was about preventing backfills. This has become a running joke on the internal forums and FB groups where people complain because they find out they are over 100% in base, but its not a real number. Its because the number drives the vacancy bidding engine which awards vacancies. Its not programmed for the 8-C-4-a secondary vacancies, which they have to do manually. This is why those only show up on the final Award with an * next to them because they don't generate additional backfills.

For those that aren't aware what 8-C-4-a secondaries are, those are additional awards when they need to fill training slots, and a person who is already qualified on a plane (for example going from SFO to LAX 787 FO) is already qualified in the seat and they still want to push another pilot through training to fill capacity of training. These are not contractually guaranteed and the company can manually add another pilot or more for each pilot that does not require training.

MIN/MAX is literally only a training slot management tool. If they are overstaffed in a category they will put this in the crew resources update so everyone is aware.

 

Yeah, the fleet is growing significantly and we are retiring a lot of pilots. The 'We'Re So ovERsTafFed!' arguments are bizarre.

 

Especially since we are growing the fleet by 60 net aircraft this year. We would not be hiring still if we were overstaffed.

 

36 net aircraft. 1054 at the end of the year from 1018 at the start. But your point still remains correct.

 

50 net aircraft. We finished 2024 with 994 planes. I have no idea where you are getting 1018 at the end of 2024. It was widely reported in January that we were the first airline to go over 1,000 aircraft on January 28th.

Here is one of many articles. https://simpleflying.com/united-airl...y-1000-planes/

There is also this... https://centreforaviation.com/news/u...rcraft-1286220

We didn't get to 1,018 until some time in April 2025. We ended March 2025 with 1,010.

I say again...50 net planes for 2025

 

You do you. I just said that based on the snapshot we will have less NB captains after this bid.