New hire class dates?

[PositiveRate]

Any guess on how the offering of leaves of absences might affect new hire classes? Is it even realistic to expect an August class date if I was hired in March?

 

[PositiveRate]

the previous post was supposed to go in the "comair lines" thread"

 

[airlinepilot]

Leaves?

What are you talking about?

 

[PositiveRate]

Sorry. I'm sure my original post made no sense out of context. I unintentionally started a new thread with my first post.

This is all in reference to a comment that was posted on this board about Comair offering pilots a leave of absence for the month of July. I would assume that this is indicative of an over-staffed situation. The follow up to that would be, how will this affect new hire classes at Comair? Will there be any classes in June, July? If so, 1x/week, 1x/month...? How will all the MCO pilots in need of CRJ training affect possible new hire classes....and has the actual close date been set for that base?

I am hoping for an August class date (interviewed 3/21), but am cautiously optomistic...especially after hearing that the company offered voluntary leaves of absence.

Any thoughts?

 

[airlinepilot]

WOW, thanks for the info...I had no idea they had offered "leaves of absences" that makes me think they would next think about furloughing......just like Midway did after the first furlough of half the pilots........I would take this as a bad sign....but I hope I am wrong....can't believe they would start classes in the near future if they are offereing the month of July off. Sounds like too many pilots.....I interviewed in Nov and was scheduled for the May 24 class

 

[skiddriver]

Yep, I thought I'd have a beer...

I E-mailed Anaconda to see what was up, and as you might expect, it's centered on the Bombardier delivery slow down. His take was that it was a speed bump on our road to success.

I'm trying to stay positive by looking at it this way:

1) It only makes good business sense not to bring folks on property and to start paying them until you have a chance to actually get some work out of them. So until the new jets start showing up, we're on hold. Personally painful right now, but sound business sense.

2) The training cycle seems to be about 2 1/2 months. That would imply that classes should start about that far in the future from expected in-service dates for the new aircraft.

3) The airline knew they were going to move the MCO guys to the CRJ when they were formulating their hiring plans. It should have been factored in (admittedly more of a hope on my part than anything else, Comair could have dropped the ball on this one and I wouldn't know).


So the whole thing revolves around the new jets. When I call and pester the folks at CVG, I always ask if they have received the new delivery schedule. When they finally say yes, I think I'll get my class date.

Finally, if this makes you feel any better, I flew with a guy in my unit that was hired by Comair in Spring '01, sent home from training due to the strike, had a class date cancelled due to 9/11, finally started training in Dec/Jan, and is now on the line. And he only had to wait 8-9 months.

You can look at that as a bad story, unless you also consider that the company honored their hiring offer during a pretty tough time in the industry, and when they could have flushed him and the other poolies and grabbed some more experienced folks.

So I don't think we have much to worry about other than the fact that now that I'm about to draw my last active duty paycheck at the end of this month, I may have to go join the kids at Mickey-D's to make ends meet until I get the call.

BTW, I interviewed 5 March.

Cheers, good luck...

 

[PositiveRate]

Agreed. It's a matter of when, not if. Whoever said "Patience is a virtue" must have been furloughed before.

As a side note, I know two friends that have been hired out of recent interviews. The fact that they have not stopped the hiring process is a definite positive for us poolies.

 

[Guam360]

don't worry, no furloughs

new hire class June 17...


good luck to all...

 

[airlinepilot]

June 17th class??

GUAM 360..where did you hear about the June 17th class....from whom?

 

[Guam360]

I read it.....

good luck to all of you interested!!

 

[bvt1151]

I too heard June 17th from the ground school instructors.

 

[skyslug]

I believe the class date is posted on the employee website.

The COLA is to save a few dollars while waiting for Bombardier to deliver the planes they are contracted to. The COLA's are at the pilot's option...they can be 1 day or several days or a day here, a day there (during July only). The pilot bid's on what day(s) he want's to have off...if he wants COLA and of course the awards for the days off are seniority based.

It's nothing even remotely bad so no need to worry. You just may have to wait a tad longer for new-hire classes to begin.