cdnavater wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 3:34 pm
JBI wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 11:47 am
twa22 wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 10:33 am
So from what I've read in the past, it's something like 15 years to hold CA in YYC, and and once you can hold CA, it's another 16 years on reserve? That means if someone joins WJ at 30 years old, they'll hold left seat at 45,and be on reserve until 61?
If true, that's looney tunes, who in their right mind would go left seat to be on reserve for the rest of their career... I hope I'm just understanding it wrong
Well, WestJet has only been around for 28 years, so if someone has been here for 31 years, there's probably some sort of misunderstanding...
Pretty sure the poster was referring to the future, someone joining at 30 today, after 15 years can hold the left seat and then another 15-16 to hold a block.
Clearly misunderstanding the situation though, as I understand it, the 15 year YVR Captain block holder is 15 years with the company, not 15 years in the left seat.
Ah, I may have misunderstood the misunderstanding.
For the OP and others who look to this board for info: Canadaflyer46 has listed what the current upgrade times have been at the moment. It's important to remember that this is a snapshot of what things are right now, and NOT a guide for what those hired today will encounter.
My educated guess is that the average upgrade times for those on property will continue to increase for the next couple of years, but then start decreasing again. Now, how much they decrease will depend on a number of factors which are too difficult to predict.
I've found a lot of people don't quite understand the concept of upgrade times. This isn't aimed at anyone in particular, just for general info. Pilots ONLY upgrade if there are Captain vacancies. These only occur if either a: there is growth (more airplanes, or higher utilization) or b: Captains leave (either retire or quit/are terminated etc.). Right at this moment, WestJet just does not have a lot of either a or b.
There has been a small amount of growth, but the reality is that with cancelling 3 of the 787 orders and the 737 Max delays, WestJet isn't getting significantly larger at the moment. There are orders on the books and it appears that WestJet is likely purchasing 4 to 6 of Lynx's 737s, but those 42 Max 10s that were supposed to start arriving in 2025 are likely still a few years out.
Unlike Air Canada, which had hundreds of pilots reaching age 65 in the last few years, WestJet has barely had any. That makes sense considering WestJet only started in 1996 and most of those hired in the first 10 years were in their 20s and 30s, they simply haven't reached retirement age yet. The first large cohort will start hitting 65 in the next 5-10 years. So we will see an uptick in retirements.
The other issue is that right now WestJet does NOT have a mandatory retirement age. This is a political hot topic which I don't wish to dive into, but from a human rights law perspective, the status quo isn't sustainable. While the Company can, and does, make individual schedules for the smaller number of pilots over 65 so that they only fly in Canada, more and more pilots reaching 65 will mean that making them schedules constitutes an "undue hardship" such that the Company can't accommodate so many.
The merger itself will play a role in upgrade times as well. Historically, mergers tend to slow movement down for short period of time leading up to the merger and a short period of time directly after the merger. However, once the merger process is completed, the new merged company starts seeing more growth.
While I'm hardly an eternal optimist, I can see all these 3 factors aligning nicely in a few years resulting in some pretty solid movement and upgrades. So, expect average upgrade times to increase, but then I expect it to drop once these 3 factors are settled.
To be clear, I do not expect to see it drop to the recent upgrade times at Air Canada. It's important to note that the vast majority of the new upgrades at AC are on Narrowbody, low seniority positions. They will be on reserve for quite some time (generally much longer than the time new WJ Captains will be on reserve - though yes, there are always exceptions). What you do see at Air Canada is more senior pilots bidding for, or staying on, widebody FO positions as the pay and schedule can be better than Narrowbody Captain positions. At WJ, senior 787 FOs do make more than 737 FOs, but don't make more than 737 Captains.
