Trans States Questions

[767200]

What's CQFO?

Don't know

 

[tk855]

I believe it stands for captain qualified first officer. Someone more knowledgeable than myself can correct me if I am wrong.

tk

 

[jtf]

CQFO = captain qualified first officer. New hires able to fly both seats and being given almost exclusively captain lines thus depriving all existing FOs with the time to upgrade those slots. They are putting some FO in CA classes, but only a small percent and I don't believe for a second that they are done hiring CQFOs- at least not until the airline is better staffed which will be a long time from now as we keep taking deliveries and not bringing on enough pilots to fly them. Also not every CQFO flew for major airlines before- at least one was hired with 0 turbine time.

As far as upgrade times- there is no way to make any reasonably accurate guesses. During normal times people flow to bigger, better airline jobs relatively quickly, but since there is very limited flow out the top, the only way for upgrade is to get new airplanes. Nobody knows how many airplanes we will end up with. Nobody knows if the J-41s will fly past the original dates that the leases end in '05 and '06. If you are a new hire now and the industry doesn't improve greatly, you won't be upgrading for many years- especially if the 41s go away after their leases expire- that is 25 airplanes that could go away in the next couple of years. I've read about people saying upgrades won't take more than a couple of years, but I just don't see that as realistic without a lot of people moving onto bigger and better things.