The min/max can be used to control churn and meter training. It can also be used to attrite a base over time. You can’t know without following many bids.

setting every nbca category min slightly less than current is more indicative of churn management than somehow wanting a global, minor reduction in captains at every single base

Plus we’re literally gaining airplanes at a good clip, WB and NB. I can’t recall our biggest WB bids over the last few years but this is around 100 CA slots. That’s pretty excellent all things considered.

No. Nothing about MIN/MAX "forces" a displacement. MIN/MAX is NOT staffing levels. Its a tool they use for the vacancy award solver to control how many awards on a bid based on what the training department said they could handle in addition to what crew resources needs for staffing. If a fleet (737 for example) tells them that the 737 training pipeline is jammed for the next 4 months and to not allow any CA to bid in because they need the space for already awarded CA and new hire FOs then they set the MAX at a lower number so that as people upgrade to WB etc they are not backfilled as that would impact training.

They should probably not even show these because they do not 100% represent how many bodies they need in seats, but just how much training they want to have happen in the next few months.

You will fit right in with the culture there . Congrats in advance

So if MIN/MAX are not staffing levels, is there a better number somewhere that indicates the company’s desired number for a given seat?

yeah the MIN/MAX.

the problem is people freak out every time the MIN drops. unless we are shrinking don’t think to hard about it. Sometimes the MIN soul purpose is to meter the training load.

im in the “attrit base over time” camp. Look at MCO. Min on FO is 40(!) lower. Captain is 10 lower. That base was 230 in each seat at one point.

just close it already and rip the bandaid off.

This exactly. They absolutely do attrit bases slowly... if you slowly let people upgrade / change to WB and don't backfill, it's the same as shrinking the base. Same w retirements if they don't backfill.

People keep saying the min is meant to meter training, which is true, but the other side of the conversation is also true. Say for any given BES (ABC737CA) the max is 200 and the min is 190. During this vacancy there are exactly 10 ABC737CA that bid to another BES, then the company will not backfill and ABC737CA will indeed shrink 10 pilots. So in the short term they really are willing to shrink it, and yes that's perhaps the training environment couldn't handle backfill training courses. The fact is, they're still shrinking it though. They may on the next vacancy put more vacancies in there to return those 10 when training load lighten or they may not. It's their decision.

yeah. People say don’t commute, which is true if you can make that happen. But man, it’s frustrating to live in a base you can’t hold that just keeps on getting smaller. I’m closing in on half way on the seniority list, and junior to the bottom MCO CA (so no base trade option), and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hold the base before I retire. (No, I don’t have 30+ years left).

oh well.