Assume 750 retirements/yr and currently 19,000 pilots. Based on retirements alone, seniority progression is

1 year - 18250 (96%)
2 years - 17500 (92%)
3 - 16750 (88%)
4 - 16000 (84%)

That's with no growth.

For 17,500 to be 75% seniority requires 23K pilots (2k/yr growth)
For 16,750 ... 22K (1k/yr growth)
for 16,000 ... 21K pilots (500/yr growth)

3 years seems plausible for 2026 hires

 

If this is based on retirements alone I think we will still see pilots hired less than 3 years being able to upgrade to NBCA over the next few years as the new planes keep getting delivered. So yes, someone hired today could still upgrade by 2029 if we do indeed get 400 more planes and have 2,500 retirements. Should be easy.

 

No, it’s not based on retirements alone. Those at least have to be replaced in order to achieve the percentages in the first part otherwise the bottom would perpetually be at the bottom. Hiring around 1k/yr would make it so that someone hired today would be around 75% in 3 years or so.

 

The variable that is not taken into account is how many oal 121 captains have been hired in the last 2 years and almost all want to upgrade.

 

Yes. This exactly. (I'm one of them lol). To be more specific, if you look at the latest vacancy award, look closely at the distribution of the seniority numbers of people bidding for NBCA. Look at how many people in the 14K number range had their bids in. It's clear that the percentage of people who are bidding for NBCA, within that seniority range, is quite high -- in other words there are fewer people deciding to delay upgrade, than you would normally expect. Almost everyone in that range is bidding for the left seat.

To see this, compare the current distribution of NBCA bidders in the 26-07 bid to, say, the distribution of bidders from the last bid we had in 2024 before the new contract fully took effect. In some cases in the current bid, I'm seeing numbers that are literally sequential (like 14,536 and 14,537 -- not the exact numbers but I'm using that to illustrate a point).

To put it another way: UPA23 alleviated the two biggest obstacles to most people who were considering upgrading into a junior base: commuting and reserve rules. By providing positive space commuting for a solid year to first time captains (or a paid move), it made it soooo much easier to upgrade. Also, with the tremendous improvement to reserve, it made it much easier for people to tolerate life as a junior reserve CA.

So I think that's what we're seeing now. There's a lot less holding people back from upgrading, and with all the former CAs we hired, a lot more people who would like to get back to the left seat ASAP. That's why I think traditional estimates of future upgrade times are too optimistic. I hope I'm wrong though!

 

I noticed the same thing. It was something like almost half the NBCA awards were 13,000+ seniority. I think that continues since we have been hiring pilots from airlines like Spirit etc where they were Captains there and probably want/need to get back to that payscale.

I think what surprised me the most was seeing 4-5 year seniority pilots getting EWR 756 CA. There is a lot of flying on that fleet and to be less than 5 years on the property flying left seat in a 767 is still something those of us hired in the 90s are bewildered that its still happening. Especially since 767-400 is WB pay.

 

Yeah, I’m with Turbo. I’m in a March class and there is no way I’m upgrading in the next decade but better an FO here than a CA at a second rate airline.

 

I don’t think the idea that almost all prior OAL captains want to upgrade ASAP is quite that clear though, because there is something to be said about the better QOL of WBFO. In fact I’ve heard that a lot of the street captains from 2 years ago want to go that route when their seat lock is up

A better determination of all of this will be to see how junior WBFO/NBCA goes by the end of the year

 

You guys can try to do mental gymnastics over how quick to hold CA. But the real data point is that LAX 320 CA was the ONLY CA seat to get a new plug.

every single CA awarded was senior to the plug except for 1 pilot in LAX.

put another way the seniority list is still correcting itself from 2 years ago.

 

I would agree with this here. And it will probably take another year or two to complete.

RS