Pinnacle upgrades

[dondk]

I thought we had one vacancy where they decreased the amount on the vacancy. It was about 8 months ago...

I thought the reason they gave was something to do with staffing and I don't recall an grievance over it either. The contract does not state anything about reducing the vacancies, only that it can be ammended. I guess you can guess DW's position on that one.

I am with Lear70 on that we should see about 40-50 more CA vacancies then we should see them based on attrition only (about 7% per year).

The only comment I am going to add.. Last fall the union came out with the whole campaign of upgrade now or lose it like they are now. 2 months later we got the announcement of 10 more jets. Not much but at least another 40 CA's. The union is doing the same campaign and there are still 65 options that have been converted but not built yet.

My .02 and not guaranteed in anyway, shape or form

 

[P38JLightning]

how does this happen?

In regards to the issue of street captains, I have to ask how is it that that is happening at PCL in the first place? I will grant you that rapid growth causes lots of upgrades, but street hiring, a lot, direct to a jet?

How/why does a company get into this position in the first place? PCL may be working under an old contract, but I'm sure they, like everyone else, have thousands of resumes on HR's desks.

Do PCL upgrade mins have waivers? Like 3000TT unless you have 2000TT including 1000 with the company and in the equipment or something like that? Seems like that woul dbe better for the company also. That way you don't have a 2999 hour FO with 2500 hours in the plane babysitting a 3000 hour street captain with 500 hours turbo prop time, etc.

I think PCL likes their "bridge" programs or whatever, but they should be tempered with moderation. Comair hires (more likely is required by DAL to hire) 300 hour WMU interns (IOW Delta pre-hires) but those numbers are a small fraction of total pilots hired. Even with a large pipeline of DCAcademy grads in the 1000 hour range, we hire more than enough higher time pilots that we would never have to street hire jet captains no matter how fast we grew, ever. (besides thankfuly our contract prohibits it).

I just don't see what management gains from binging on GIA students or the like.

 

[dondk]

Mgmt gains guaranteed FO's for a defined period of time. Mesa has been doing it for years and it does work. Fixed cost for a fixed period of time, the bean counters can use that for numerous things.

A lower time FO also has no options to go anywhere else, so they are married to the company. Additionally iof the company want to put pressure on these FO's for contract reasons they can. Where will a 1100 hour FO go in this market? not back to a jet!

As for 1000's of resume's on a desk, I have heard they are having problems filling classes. Probably becasue we are no pay and the room and board is on the new hires dime. I am sure that weed's out 30-40% of the potential applicants if not more.

we have waivers, basically 3500 reducable to 3000 with up to 500 hours with time in type. There are other reducers for those employed with the company. Although it is still only 500 hours and it is towards ME and turbine time.

This is the second time in 4 years that they have gone to the street to find peep's for the left seat. It is not surprising for PNCL, this is a typical kneejerk reaction. We don't plan, we react!

 

[redflyer65]

Heard on Friday that the "interview board" is headed back to Fort Lauderdale for another GIA round, not sure how many will be hired, but for now, the pipeline continues. When will the music stop. When it does, it will be quiet for a while.

 

[P38JLightning]

makes sense

dondk,

I guess I can see that. At Comair we have been getting burned by junior FO attrition the last year or two (one of the most expensive kinds of attrition)

Although you might start to see a similar anomoly when the rapid growth spurt stops at PCL in a few years (or sooner?) Some of our junior FO's left for Chautauqua so its possible to get another "jet job" with relatively low time. Eagle and SkyWest have very low mins too (not just published but competitive) but I guess that has less to do with the flight time of the people you hire than it does with the growth rate at other places relative to your own.

 

[dondk]

I have heard that each time they go to FLL it is for no less than 50, on average 80 these last few trips.

P38JLightning,

we had that FO attrition about 18 months ago.. Many guys hired in late '01/early '02 with the promise of upgrade within a year.. Did not happen and we had a decent exodus in '04 from all those tired of waiting. Ironically that is about the same time mgmt increased the GIA numbers from 50/50 per class to almost all GIA per class.

I have heard of a few of our GIA dudes seriously looking at COEX lately. Maybe when the growth stops in the near future we will see another exodus. I'd like to see more CA's getting hired though, a FO is not going to help me

 

[FO 4 Life]

I talked to KM last week about interviewing today. I was upfront with her and told that I had been hired as a captain at another airline and asked about turning new FOs into captains in class. She said that 9E was almost to the point of hiring captains off the street and not waiting until they got to class to upgrade them. She proceeded to say that a memo came down that day ending CA hiring so 9E could run pure FO classes for the next couple months and catch up staffing. She thought I would probably see an upgrade within 6-8 months. I'll take the bird in hand.

 

[English]

I'll take the bird in hand.

Great idea.

I've started doing that myself!

 

[dondk]

A new vacancy came out.
6 CA 4 MEM 1 DTW 1 MSP
64 FO 8 MEM 27 DTW 29 MSP


The largest FO vacancy yet.

 

[DoinTime]

....She thought I would probably see an upgrade within 6-8 months....

KM has been saying 6-8 month upgrades for the past five years. While history has proven her to be right from time to time she has also been off by up to 2.5 years during this same time span.