UAL growth/used planes article
 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/united...160657631.html



http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/yX2...ax&auto=format

Latest rumor- in addition to the 2 announced 737-700s, there are 4 more coming from Copa. Also looking at 25+airbuses from Asia.

We have 75 and 76 aircraft that are now staying...also heard they are talking about retrofit like the 767-400. I think it was 1.1mil per plane so who knows, but it would certainly help sync the fleet.

Hopefully we continue to see increased mainline flying, we need to be in charge of our domestic product, not the regionals. more 319/320 and 737 aircraft are just the ticket. Cut 2 RJ flights per NB flight. Will alleviate congestion as well helping us during bad weather days and all the time in super contested airports.

The FiFi rumor again ?! At least these are all GOOD rumors.

Apparently it's a direct result of stiffing issues with the regional feed. The 50 seaters and Qs are phasing out with E175s and narrow bodies as replacement.

Also, pure rumor, management asked to amend CBA to raise first year pay.When ALPA countered with an across-the-board raise the company backed down.

That doesn't make sense. It's not like United's having a problem getting qualified applicants.

Yep. One of the dumbest rumors I've heard in a while.

Just passing it along for public consumption. Not claiming to be an oracle here. This was from a few pay grades above my level, but still could be bs.

If you have "stiffing issues" longer than 4 hours they say you should call a doctor...:D

We only have 10,000 applicants hiring about 700 a year. So we will run out of applicants in 13 years if no new ones apply.....

Oh wait....

Devil's Advocate: Aren't there 3 legacy carriers that have 10,000 applicants to divvy up, each wanting to hire several hundred a year? With several hundred retiring each year? Oh, plus SWA, Jet Blue, Spirit, Frontier, the fractionals and foreign carriers?

And despite all this, we maintain our 10,000 pilot applicant pool. So new people keep applying, etc. I'll bet we are adding people to the pool of applicants at the same rate or greater that we remove them from interviews.

United, AA, Delta, SWA won't have pilot shortages. It will be the other airlines.

Pilots don't decide where to go based on 1st year pay. They look at the overall picture.

United needs to double the number of pilots hired. 700/year isn't enough.

We are rapidly approaching a point where regional flying will be completely unreliable due to their manning issues. Time to replace 2 RJs with one mainline NB.

But I don't expect increased hiring to dwindle the list of qualified pilots much because there will be plenty of new applications. And I'm willing to bet that 10,000 is a very low estimate of current applications on file.

Edit: I just noticed that Endeavor Air and SkyWest are advertising on this website for FOs with signing bonuses. Sweet. That should accelerate the retirement of RJs.

Ya'll are also forgettin, maybe those on the bottom of the 10,000 applications stack, we really don't want to hire....smaller pool than you think.

When does that become a concern? When the stack's down to 3000 applications?
Even after years of constant hiring, the stack was still at more than 10,000 when 9/11 happened.

Congestion was always a plus for RJ's. Not for us, or the pax, but for the company and reduced competition. You can't compete if you can't get a slot.

As an expat contract pilot, the number one question the FO's had was:

"how do I get a job overseas, especially America".

There are 10's of thousands of foreign pilots that would apply to work for us and Delta for our current 1st year pay rates. Uncle Sammy just needs to issue the green cards. They WON't come here to make 19 dollars an hour at Mesa. But 60 bucks an hour is a pay raise for most of them. Some of the dodgier airlines pay Captains that.

There will be no pilot shortage any time soon.

If I were UAL, I would be hiring Delta Connection pilots as fast as I could. And vice versa. The express carriers are hosed.

Agree. United will never have a pilot shortage. It'll be every other flying operation out there, because they'll all leave those other jobs to be a pilot at a United.

Doesn't matter how many applications we have or don't have. If that stack gets below 3,000 word will get out and the apps will come in. Right now how many qualified pilots don't even apply because they figure it is a waste of time?

That was before the ATP/1,500-hour rule bottlenecked the training pipeline.

I know where we can get 50+used 757s for free and we wouldn't have to even repaint them.

But what would we do with all the money we saved doing that?

Shut down your APU and do not question Sabre.

Yes and NO

Remember, that most applicants apply to multiple airlines. When they get hired they may or may not be revoking their application at other airlines.

Each airline could have 13,000 applications, but it is a safe assumption that the same 13,000 (plus or minus) that applied at UAL, also applied at DAL, etc, etc.

^^+10-13,000.

My guess is at some point in the near future there will be a pilot shortage - the ATP rule for one and the extreme cost for a civilian to get the training. There will always be a steady supply of highly qualified military pilots but at some point, that supply will be inadequate either because the military might increase commitments or there will be wars and they won't be leaving the service. The airlines will turn to the FAA and ask for relief on the ATP rule and thus open up the pipeline from the bottom up (Regionals to Majors).

There might be an overall pilot shortage, but United will not have a problem hiring pilots. United will just hire them from the regionals, military, overseas, and other pilots who have ATPs, creating shortages in those area.

But United doesn't have a pilot shortage.

This video explains exactly how many pilots there are out there and how many jobs they are competing for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKanuyeawc

FWIW, my impression on the first year pay raise rumor was that it's kind of a stop-gap measure to stay relevant in attracting talent. Yes, we all realize there are 10k+ apps out there, but maybe it's the top 5% of those that all the legacies want (or at least want to have the option to hire).

Delta and American have made improvements in their respective contracts, and although United's contract isn't inferior yet, I think lagging behind in profits and remnants of the merger stagnation make it a tough call for the top prospects applying to all three legacies. This effectively would be a way of sweetening the pot without a full blown contract negotiation (especially if in a few years management isn't keen on negotiating quickly).

Purely a theory though

While you're at it, don't take a direct going westbound when on an optimized wind route! Sabre isn't so bad. Much better than that crap Phoenix put out.

Correct, it's closer to 13,000 applications on file now. That's straight from management at DENTK last December.

Right. But some guys can't see past that. They just take worse case scenario (i.e. they have apps in everywhere) and then they assume one the pool is depleted there are no more pilots. The Club of Rome said (in the 1970s) we would be out of oil worldwide by 2010 using the same logic. Of course we kept finding more oil, faster than we were using it.

But despite having hired 1,000 off the street in the last few years, plus removing another 400 by interviewing and not hiring them, the number of applicants has grown.

There may be an "overall" pilot shortage at some point in the future, but it won't affect United's hiring. Like the video explained, there are more than enough pilots, just not enough to fly for $18,000 a year starting pay. I don't blame them, they are certainly worth more than that.

There are 4 true majors. United, American, Delta, and SWA. Those 4 are the ones everyone is trying to get to. Yes there are other good airline jobs, but these are really the ones at the top of the list for most pilots out there.

It will be interesting to see what happens at the regionals over the next few years though.

FedEx, UPS and Alaska combined are roughly equivalent to one more in term of size.

No question. Lots of guys want to go there too. Also good jobs. They would also be immune to a pilot shortage. Now the other 100 airlines and air companies out there, not so much.

10,000 applications, lots of the same apps at all the Majors, lots have applied that are not close to competitive #'s, something (bad) on their record,ect...I would bet a pool of 5000 realistic applicants.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to PT Barnum: There's an ATP born every minute.