Upgrades in Horizon

[FlyingToIST]

why are they that long? Currently I heard they are around 7 years. There is expansion with some point to point service and the recent Frontier express deal, so one would expect that will be some moving up opportunities.

 

[rke44]

The reason upgrades are as long as they are is because the attrition rate is next to nothing. That is due largely in part to the fact that the vast majority of our capts have no ambition to move on to the next level combined with the current state of the industry. I've been with QX for over 5 years now and we haven't really grown at all in that time. You mentioned the Frontier expansion, but you are misinformed. It wasn't an expansion at all, just a reallocation of aircraft from PDX to DEN. We've picked up maybe an extra aircraft or two in the last couple of years, but it's pretty inconsequential when compared to other companies that have taken planes at a rate of 2 or 3 per month. Basically, growth is nil and not forecast. Upgrades that started class last week were hired in Aug 99 which is less than the 7 years you mentioned, but it is certainly headed to that point real fast. I don't expect anything to change in the near future so I'm sure upgrades will exceed the 7 year mark easily for some unfortunate souls.

 

[QCappy]

Just to add to rke44's point. We have the same number of aircraft (65) that we did 10 years ago, including Frontier JetExpress aircraft. NO JOKE! They are just bigger and faster. We have about 40 more pilots now than we did six years ago, and I think that is only because we were losing people like crazy back then and now we fly a lot more block hours and need more people to cover the schedule.