you get your upgrade?

 

With the amount of redeyes done from the islands (honestly, even without that) I highly doubt 60-65% of trips start as a redeye out of SFO on the 73.

 

Quick glance at tomorrows trips, and discounting 1 day turns, 50/50 mix of red eyes and normal-ish departures

 

If you read the union SSC emails you will see that the west coast bases all have near 50% or more pairings with a red eye in it. Maybe that’s what he was trying to say.

 

Progression at the top end is slow. All the senior CAs that don’t want to fly the 78, love their 2 day Hawaii trips. Not efficient and you’re gone the full two days, but it is an easy trip.
LA is a weird base because it’s limited. There is no room to grow literally (like DEN or IAH) and figuratively (LAWA won’t allow one airline to dominate). Yes terminal 9 will be built sometime in the next decade but there have been company emails that describe how “great terminal 9 will be for our STAR Alliance partners!”. So not sure how much dedicated gate space we will have there. There’s also no real room to shrink because it is such an important market. But between the big four airlines there everyone is around 18-22% of the market. No clear leader.
What that means for UAL is you have a medium size 737 base. A small A320 base. A small and further shrinking 756 base. And a medium 787 base. The movement has been good on the FO side for the 73. It’ll be 2-3 years before you can get to the plug on the 78. But that’s my guess I haven’t looked at the seniority numbers to see if that’s accurate. I’m interested to see where they’re going to be putting these 78s that are being delivered this year and the years to come. And whether or not it will grow the 78 base in LA. I’m hopefully pessimistic.

 

Yup, I shouldn't have said "started with a redeye" -- but last month the number of SFO73 pairings with a redeye included in the pairing was right at 60 percent. That has been consistent for the last year, at the least. (I taught AI how to read our monthly bid packages so it's easy to ask it questions about the pairings.)

Roughly half of Hawaii trips include redeyes, but those are largely contained in the 3 day pairings that go pretty darn senior bc of how efficient and commutable they are.

I'm 30 pct in the right seat and have only just started to be able to hold a full line of island trips with no redeyes. But only because I have no problem with weekends. I think you have to be top 10 pct to hold island trips, no redeyes, weekdays only...

 

Nope. Judging by the latest snapshot I'm still about 1000 numbers short. But I'm just enjoying the fact that I haven't done a redeye in more than a year and I spend most of my time on the tracks, in hours that one would consider civilized. (SFO Hawaii flying has to be the easiest flying we have). When my number comes up, I'll be doing nothing but BWI, BOS, PHL, and RDU redeyes once again...

 

Another option is to stay in the tracks to HI, avoid undesirable trips, and enjoy the ride.😁

 

I'm considering switching from the Bus to the 756 in EWR (FO). I live local and I'm one of those "bid reserve to hide and avoid work" types. So far it's been successful on the bus. I assume the 756 is the same way?

Also, about how many weeks should I expect for the 756 qual course?

 

All training has about the same footprint. About 30 days.