Sunwing is going to interview for 12 FO positions. Interviews start soon.

What base are they hiring for? Is it going to go up on their Careers site?

Those questions should be directed to hr but typically YYZ and YUL.

nohojob, I have not seen any Sunwing add regarding this or heard of any rumors. Do you send your application directly to their HR, or do you wait until their job add comes out on their website?

yes send it directly to hr

right now i think they are working on "internal recommendation from the crew".

not only

Just curious, how many did they end up hiring last year? I seem to recall that they were initially going to hire up to 90 but then lost a contract or something so they significantly reduced the numbers hired.

They interviewed about 90 last year. 34 of them were hired in the last couple of months + don't know how many cadets, if any.
12 more will be hired from a new pool.
As mentioned above, as the number is pretty low, they will just work on "internal recommendations" first.

I see sunwing is hiring again, and I just have a few questions about them, do they still have some layoffs every summer, or have they found a way to keep everyone employed? If they're keeping everyone employed, is it possible to get a leave of absence over the summer? Also what would a schedule for a new hire look like? Roughly how many days off, and can you group a bunch together in a month, or are the days off pretty spread out throughout the month? Thanks a lot for any info, I see they say more info will be provided in an interview, but I just want to have a basic idea of what I'm applying for.

There's no layoffs.

I don't know about LOA.

You have a minimum of 11 GDOs per months as per the contract. You often end up with more days off because of gray days.

Whether you can group those days or not depends on your seniority.

The schedule for the busy months for a new hire would be around 10 to 12 days of work and the rest GDOs and gray days.
The quiet months would be a lot reserve and just your 11 GDOs.

There is no more seasonal pilot provisions in the newest CBA so all pilots are hired as full time. As for layoffs...that will depend on the work Sunwing gets each season. Due to more overseas deployments this season (8 aircraft) Sunwing ended up needing to hire pilots even after they lost some of the American work and had reduced the hiring in the fall to virtually nil. LOA's can be requested but are not a given...it will depend on the work they have and the staffing levels they need.

The schedule is really hard to guess at. Although YYZ and YUL are the only permanent bases we have, there are several deployed bases in both the winter and summer. If you are junior in a small base you really don't end up with a lot of choice and obviously it depends on how those above you bid and what you are type of flying/days off you are bidding for. One year I was at a small base second from the bottom...I don't think I got more than three days off in a row all season. The following year I was second from the top and got pretty much everything I wanted although, at a small base even the senior pilots suddenly will get something they didn't want because no one else is legal to fly it. On another note...Sunwing is in the process of changing our bidding software so there will be a learning curve on how to bid and as it is still in testing no one is sure how this new system will work.

On the subject of deployments...the company cannot force you to deploy to a domestic base, however, they can on the foreign (overseas) deployments if not enough pilots bid to go. In this case you can be forced to a foreign deployed base for a half term (32-119 days)

Sorry, not a lot of definitive answers but I hope this helps.

Do foreign deployments go relatively junior? Or would this be a perk of being a senior pilot wanting to bid something different and new?

This year it went to the bottom of the list

So from what I understand you cannot expect to spend the whole summer with your family if they don't do layoffs anymore during the low season?

So what would a typical block look like in the winter and summer ?