Alphadriver

Curious, my interview is the 31st of this month. With class dates backdated and so many pilots pulled in already is now still a good time to join PDT? Already have ATP and a couple thousand hours so are upgrade times still doable around 18 month mark or so?

Andytcsi

It's absolutely a great time to come here. Lots of growth, the training backup is just growing pains. There will be many more pilots coming, better to be now than later. Get hired, let your seniority get rolling and enjoy some paid time off.

MKUltra

Here is the truth.. I came here with no airline experience about two years ago.. now a captain.. Top 40% on the seniority list. About halfway up the list captains.. make 65 dollars an hour.. Will make 7500 retention bonus plus another 10k dash retention bonus. I pick up around 2 extra days off open flying a month. Every day is 1000 dollars extra pay.

I will go to e145 school probably in September.

Every month I now move up 5 people in seniority due to the flow.. I move up several more spots a month due to others leaving to legacies, ups or FedEx. I will move up 7 additional spots this year due to retirements. Next year is more retirements.

I will flow to American early 2019. That will mean I have been at pdt 4 years. We are flowing 10 year people now. Once we get through the 07 and 08 hours this year, we will be flowing the 13 hires next year.

Piedmont will take on as many planes as it can take and staff.

American losses 10 planes in October and every month there after when whiskey leaves. Pdt, envoy, and psa will be picking up that up. That's a lot of flying! A lot of flying.

All the wholly owned subsidiaries are expected to to be around 1200 pilots. We are halfway there..

I have said this for the past year... if you can come in today, do everything you can do to get in here... opportunities like this don't happen often and they don't last forever.

Word is 4 to 6 dash 100s are going to stay online to service HVN and HHH. American does not want to lose those markets and the 140/145 can not service those airports.

140s are coming eventually.

Wink

I would agree with all of this, except the bolded. There is no correlation of block hours at the express level to fleet utilization at mainline. Which aircraft are they retiring and which are they gaining? How are you concluding it will be serviced by rj's rather than just upgauging the aircraft and reducing frequency?

We will,however, definitely see growth and a more diverse route structure due to AWAC pulling out.

Regardless, i share MK's sentiment that there is no better time to get on with PDT. If you didn't do the math, he will make at least $100,960 this year not including referral bonuses and per diem as a 3rd year Turboprop Captain. Not too shabby if you ask me...

MKUltra

I can only go by what SK told me... at the time the thought we were going to get a lot of orf and dca... but than again American may announce e190e2 ave e195e2 for mainline... right now everything is up in the air. Im interested to see how they are going to cover the lift.

Theaveragejoker

There's a part of me that would love to see 190e2 or something similar at mainline.

DoNoHarm

Do pilots at PDT actually believe that they will flow in 4 years from DOH?

Wink

Uh, ya. There is nothing regional about the E175E2, let alone a E190E2

mm1989

I was a 2016 hire and all of the numbers seem to support it right now. Still applying elsewhere

AZFlyer

If things continue to progress as they are today, I'll flow in pretty much exactly 4 years from my DOH. Conversely, if we don't grow anymore and stay at 5 flows/month and every single person ahead of me takes the flow (excluding the ~100 lifers that aren't flowing), then I'll still be here for just barely less than 5 years in total. BUT, we know that there will be some impossible to determine number of people who won't take the flow for one reason or another (go somewhere else/quit/fired, etc) and we are also currently growing at a decent rate, so the 4 years in total is completely within reason for a lot of us.

And if something prevents the flow from happening anymore, well, we're no worse off than you at that point.