Originally Posted by Longhornmaniac8

I really don't know why people struggle with the MIN/MAX concept so much. It's pretty simple. When a base has MIN below the current number of pilots, any attrition for that BES won't be backfilled until reaching the MIN. So if you have a BES with 500 pilots currently, a MIN of 490, and a MAX of 500, Crew Planning would allow the base to shrink by up to 10 pilots. They aren't requiring it, but would permit it. Now why they do this could be two different things. 1) They're doing it out of training considerations, which is what most of the current vacancy bid is. These are growing fleets and it doesn't benefit the company to reduce the number of CA long term, but due to training throughput they need to limit potential activations into those categories which would trigger a training event. 2) The base is intentionally shrinking. You're starting to see some of this on the 756 fleets in particular, as well as IAH 737. It's obviously not in danger of closing, but prior to UPA23 they grew it far larger than their optimizer said it should be because it's where they could get pilots to upgrade. So they've been right-sizing it over a period of time. At one point it was up to just over 800 FOs, but has been reduced down to the current 646 through attrition.

The net result is that reducing the MIN for any BES limits the total amount of movement on this vacancy. All of these widebody CAs will be coming from WBFO and NBCA, almost exclusively. A WBFO taking a WBCA will create a new vacancy that must be filled because the MIN is set to force a backfill. A NBCA doing the same thing likely won't in most domiciles.

We've all heard that a single WBCA vacancy can create [insert number somewhere between 5-12] vacancies due to the cascading backfills. That presumes, however, that each of those positions must be backfilled. Hypothetically, if that number was 8 vacancies created per WBCA vacancy and there are 92 WBCA vacancies, there could've been 736 people moving on this vacancy purely as a result of the WBCA vacancies. That won't be anywhere close to the case because of how they've done the MIN/MAX.

Originally Posted by FriendlyPilot

Good analysis and explanation. Also remember that almost all of these people upgrading leaving a category that isn't allowing backfills right now, will just add to the future vacancy bids when the training capacity is more suited to have more CA training. 737 and Airbus are growing fleets as we get 200 of those planes in the next 2 years and 50 more 787s. I can't imagine not continuing to have vacancy bids, if not even more, as retirements ramp up over the next few years.

Originally Posted by TurquoiseLine

Except if fuel prices require temporarily parking NGs and CEOs. Then growth can dramatically be slowed while taking deliveries

Originally Posted by TurquoiseLine

Except if fuel prices require temporarily parking NGs and CEOs. Then growth can dramatically be slowed while taking deliveries

Originally Posted by FriendlyPilot

Not sure they want to stop hiring and start shrinking the airline. They used the terms "full speed ahead" when they referenced $150 oil. Said we'd take advantage of opportunities to buy assets that airlines would sell to stay afloat.

We had oil at $130 in 2022 but still we hired a couple thousand pilots that year while other airlines lost money. I'd be shocked to see anything other than moving forward with deliveries and controlled growth.

Originally Posted by blizzue;[url=tel:4019763

4019763]I knew there was a reason I could be number one there.

Originally Posted by Turbosina

I have never understood that either. I flew with one CA who said "I don't want people to see what I want." Um, OK? Because everyone will see what you were awarded anyways 🙄

Originally Posted by Agratefulflyer

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

Originally Posted by TimetoClimb

It seems they are not backfiling NB CA categories much at all. So the min allows them to do this?