How bad is the LAX 7ER? Pretty shocked to see it go junior to ATL

no worse than the west coast 320 or 73n tbh

The days of new hire WB FOs is probably over, but you can still get a captain slot after a year.

Point of clarification for any brand New Hires or applicants. Based on this snapshot, you can (tentatively) still get a captain slot ~2300 numbers from the bottom (~85% system seniority), so because of massive hiring (~2580 in a year), pilots hired about 1 year ago can (tentatively) be a plug captain. We are hiring about 1700 over the next year, and then much less than that a year from now. "Time to hold captain" will naturally stretch out as a result. Further, I would expect the junior captain system seniority to also rise as things settle out to a new/old normal, but that's JMO.

FWIW, WB FO plug was ~71% on this snapshot. Will be interesting to see what the final results show.

I hear they are. They are not strictly staying out west. They start out with redeyes and eventually touch ATL, NYC etc and get all messed up. Airbus (baby bus ) trips are arguably the worst in the company.

It’s really good fleet and trips, but it’s LAX and junior trips aren’t the best. Has been a junior base for a long time. Gone to new hires and sub 2 year captains for over a year

Much less hiring? I thought it was still a pretty decently high number for retirements and growth. Not 1700 though obviously. They did say this year would taper down and that changed so who knows really

I still think so much is up in the air. If regionals don’t improve, that will drive more hiring at mainline and the like. Originally the rumor was much less hiring this summer and we’ve seen how that went.

Yeah I thought it was still 500+ just for retirements for end of the decade but I suppose in context of 17-2500 that is a lot less

With the new planes next year the time to hold a WB will get less and less I think. It will however take a new hire today 8-10 years and that’s including the new planes. Did you see how many ATL CAs took the 350B? Almost every opening on the ATL350B was taken by current CAs. That’s crazy