Andy

I think he made that statement to help the NK/B6 merger get approved by the courts. Changing those planes from yellow to blue takes a lot of seats off the market.

I fly with more former NK pilots than F9 pilots. But I'm not DEN based.

Being on reserve in base is pretty easy. And with the amount of hiring at United, it shouldn't be that long before someone who upgraded at 1 year is holding a line.

monkeybrains

Jr lineholder in DEN as a CA is what 20-22 years for a dogsh!t line, I get that it is tough to be honest with yourself about where you work (we all want to work for a good airline we can be proud of) but F9 is a dumpsterfire that isn’t getting better, and I’m someone that is here for the duration.

spooldup

That is looking from someone who doesn't live in DEN.... yeah, if you live in DEN, then you are probably better off going to UAL

monkeybrains

I don’t know that I agree with that either. Domiciles are not growing. They open something new, put 50-75 crews and that is it, it is a mature base. Look at DFW, ATL, PHX, there is no growth. They will likely displace to open CVG, CLE, RDU or whatever the next base will be. Point is, you will move up the FO ranks to some degree, but while it won’t be as bad as DEN, the same issue is going to exist at all domiciles, especially if their focus of domiciles east of the Mississippi continues.

HSCompressor

Seniority list don’t grow, then bases don’t grow. Only 6 upgrades on this recent bid. We need people to stay to have larger bases.

I agree though, it makes no sense to open bases if you can’t staff them. Only to displace people to fill them.

Put simply if more people would be staying I would wager the bases you listed would be larger.

TOGALOCK

True statement. I remember when all the ORD pilots filled in ATL quite nicely.

HSCompressor

Depending on who you talk to, the only thing that was surprising about the closing of ORD is that it didn’t happen sooner. The writing had been on the wall that it wasn’t working. Not my words.

TOGALOCK

That was the scuttlebutt for many years and I had been hearing it for a long time when I was based there. “ORD is just too expensive and there isn’t enough gate space” was one of the many things that was consistently stated. The problem with all of that being actual truth, however, is that after closing it down as a pilot domicile, they continued to operate it as a flight attendant base, continued to operate the same amount of flights out of ORD that they had when it was a base, and began flying into MDW again with a large amount of flights. The Chicago operation seems to be working just fine.

But I agree, the rumors were that it was in the crosshairs for a long time. The biggest injustice of it all is HOW it was done and the fact that all the pilots knew through flight attendant communications before any info was actually disseminated to the pilot group. It felt a bit like an airline shutting down overnight. One day things are fine, the next day everyone shows up to work at the airport and “out of business” signs are on the ticket counter.

A lot of good will of a lot of good pilots was destroyed that day.

ERAUAV8R

CLE opening in spring. Expect a reduction in Vegas. We’re going to east coast ops

Dragonslayer69

LOL!! Sure we are.